Determination of crystallographic chirality of MnSi thin film grown on Si (111) substrate

Daisuke Morikawa, Yuichi Yamasaki, Naoya Kanazawa, Tomoyuki Yokouchi, Yoshinori Tokura, and Taka-hisa Arima

Phys. Rev. Materials 4, 014407 – Published 21 January 2020

Abstract

MnSi is a prototypical chiral cubic magnet, in which swirling magnetic objects referred to as magnetic skyrmions appear. It is expected that the thin film of MnSi may expand the range of the magnetic skyrmion lattice phase in the temperature–magnetic field diagram. On the other hand, the MnSi film on an achiral Si (111) substrate may suffer from chiral twin formation. We succeeded in visualizing the domain structure of the chirality and axis orientation of a MnSi thin film by using a combination of transmission electron microscopy and x-ray reflectivity measurement. Only two types of domains were found on a Si (111) substrate. The information is essential for the challenge of homochiral film fabrication.

Received 24 May 2019
Revised 10 September 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.4.014407

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Domains Skyrmions

Chiral magnets

Electron diffraction Transmission electron microscopy

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Daisuke Morikawa ^1,*, Yuichi Yamasaki^1,2,3, Naoya Kanazawa², Tomoyuki Yokouchi², Yoshinori Tokura^1,2, and Taka-hisa Arima^1,4

¹RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan
²Department of Applied Physics and Quantum Phase Electronics Center (QPEC), University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan
³Research and Services Division of Materials Data and Integrated System (MaDIS), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba 305-0047, Japan
⁴Department of Advanced Materials Science, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-8561, Japan

^*Present address: Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan.