Observation of melting skyrmion strings by transmission electron microscopy

Abstract

Skyrmions, which possess topological spin structures and the ability to be driven by extremely low current density, are promising for next generation spintronics applications. Direct observation of two-dimensional (2D) and its 3D string requires nanometer-scale spatial resolution. We have applied Lorentz microscopy tomography and differential phase contrast tomography using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to visualize 3D vector-field maps of skyrmion strings as well as the melting strings with increasing temperature. Here we introduce two electron tomography methods to image 3D topological spin textures and show the results of the 3D vector fields of skyrmion strings and their melting process in real space.