Hidden magnetic structures revealed
Our recent work on diamond magnetometry of antiferromagnetic domain walls is highlighted in the Physics Magazine
“Interesting but useless” is how Louis Néel famously described antiferromagnets, materials for whose discovery he was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics. Jump forward 50 years and these materials are trending among condensed-matter physicists, who are exploring their use in next-generation information-processing and storage devices. But to take the step from useless to useful, many unknowns still need to be uncovered. Using a nanoscale scanning diamond magnetometer to image the weak magnetic fields from antiferromagnetic domain walls, we resolve how the spins in a the “proper” antiferromagnetic material Cr2O3 - a material where the spins can only point either up or down - twist between domains. Published in the Physical Review B, this work is a collaboration between the Degen, Gambardella and Fiebig groups.
Links to websites
external page "Hidden Magnetic Structures Revealed" in Physics
external page "Coexistence of Bloch and Néel walls in a collinear antiferromagnet" in Physical Review B