The recently discovered interlayer Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (IL-DMI) in multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy favors the canting of spins in the in-plane direction and could thus enable new exciting spin textures such as Hopfions in continuous multilayer films. A key requirement is to control the IL-DMI and so in this study, the influence of an electric current on the IL-DMI is investigated by out-of-plane hysteresis loops of the anomalous Hall effect under applied in-plane magnetic fields. The direction of the in-plane field is varied to obtain a full azimuthal dependence, which allows us to quantify the effect on the IL-DMI. We observe a shift in the azimuthal dependence of the IL-DMI with increasing current, which can be understood from the additional in-plane symmetry breaking introduced by the current flow. Using an empirical model of two superimposed cosine functions we demonstrate the presence of a current-induced term that linearly increases the IL-DMI in the direction of current flow. With this, a new easily accessible possibility to manipulate 3D spin textures by current is realized. As most spintronic devices employ spin-transfer or spin-orbit torques to manipulate spin textures, the foundation to implement current-induced IL-DMI into thin-film devices is broadly available.
@article{arxiv.2209.01450,
title = {Controlling 3D spin textures by manipulating sign and amplitude of interlayer DMI with electrical current},
author = {Fabian Kammerbauer and Won-Young Choi and Frank Freimuth and Kyujoon Lee and Robert Frömter and Dong-Soo Han and Henk J. M. Swagten and Yuriy Mokrousov and Mathias Kläui},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.01450},
year = {2022}
}