Citation: Marrows, C. H., and K. Zeissler. "Perspective on skyrmion spintronics." Applied Physics Letters 119.25 (2021).
Tags: Physical, Materials-applications
This paper gives a lovely survey of the field of skyrmion spintronics. There are lots of different topological materials out there. Many of them are very hard to work with - see, for example, the difficulty people have been having with observing the Majorana fermion. However, skyrmions are a shining example of a topological object which is easy to make in the lab, can be controlled using standard techniques, and has wide potential applications to technology.
Magnetic skyrmions are spin textures in a magnetic material which are topologically protected, in the sense that they cannot be trivialized via local continuous spin manipulation. In the words of the authors, "Magnetic skyrmions are attractive for representing data in next-generation spintronic devices owing to their stability, small size, and ease of manipulation with spin torques". Skyrmions can even be made at room-temperature, which is highly unusual in the world of topological materials. This article does a fantastic job of surveying the materials in which skyrmions can be found, the ways that they can be manipulated, and the potential applications.