Meronlike Spin Textures in In-Plane-Magnetized Thin Films

The interfacing of magnetic materials with nonmagnetic heavy metals with a large spin-orbit coupling, such as
Pt
, results in an asymmetric exchange interaction at the interface due to the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), which in turn leads to the formation of skyrmions and topological spin structures in perpendicularly magnetized multilayers. Here, we show that out-of-plane spin domains with lateral dimensions from 200 nm to 2
μ
m
are stabilized in in-plane magnetized
Ta
/
Co
/
Pt
trilayers. We show that these spin textures are largely insensitive to the direction of the in-plane magnetization switched by either magnetic fields or electric fields applied across a
Si
3
N
4
gate dielectric. The results of micromagnetic simulations indicate that the DMI is required for the stabilization of such out-of-plane domains and that the presence of surface roughness helps to stabilize larger structures, in agreement with experimental results. We identify these spin structures as meronlike topological textures, characterized by a perpendicular spin texture in an uniformly in-plane magnetized system.