Electric Field Manipulation of the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya Interaction in Hybrid Multiferroic Structures

Abstract

Hybrid multiferroic films are fabricated by depositing Pt/Co/Pt multilayers onto [001] and [110] cuts of PMN-PT crystal. The dependence of the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (iDMI) on applied electric field is experimentally investigated in the system by the Brillouin light scattering (BLS) method. A strong variation (from −0.2 to 0.8 mJ/m2) of the iDMI constant is observed when the electric field is applied. In the case of [001] cut, the observed changes in the iDMI have an isotropic character, while in the case of [110] cut, they are anisotropic, which corresponds to the symmetry of the PMN-PT deformations. The change in the iDMI is accompanied by the formation of various unusual domain structures and skyrmion lattices. External control of the DMI with an electric field opens the way to manipulate topological magnetic solitons (such as skyrmions), which are promising objects for information processing and storage.