SPICE Workshop on Quantum Functionalities of Nanomagnets, June 17th - 19th 2025
Geetha Balakrishnan
Recently, there has been considerable interest in the physics of magnetic skyrmions due to their potential use in spintronic devices. Non-centrosymmetric magnetic systems have been found to host a variety of exotic, and in some cases topologically protected, magnetic states such as skyrmion lattices, bimerons, chiral solitons and helimagnetism to list a few. More recently skyrmions been found and investigated in centrosymmetric intermetallics as well. To make headway in understanding the physics of these skyrmion materials, high quality single crystals are essential. This has motivated us to embark upon a study of several classes of skyrmion materials and to explore a wide composition range of each of the family of compounds. The materials investigated range from centrosymmetric intermetallics such as Gd2PdSi3, GdRu2Si2, magnetic layered van der Waals materials such as Fe3GeTe2, to a large family of intercalated transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and other frustrated and topological magnets.
In this talk, I will present an overview of the materials characteristics of several of the above materials including the challenges in the synthesis of these materials using a variety of techniques at Warwick. Investigations of the effects of substitution and the resulting structural order/disorder as well as magnetic frustration on the existence of the skyrmion phase in these crystals sheds light on the origin and the tuning of the skyrmion lattices. The study of their important structure–property correlations is vital to the understanding of these materials for possible future device applications.