Nanoskyrmion engineering with sp-electron materials: Sn monolayer on a SiC(0001) surface

Abstract

Materials with sp magnetism demonstrate strongly nonlocal Coulomb interactions, which opens a way to probe correlations in the regimes not achievable in transition metal compounds. By the example of Sn monolayer on a SiC(0001) surface, we show that such systems exhibit unusual but intriguing magnetic properties at the nanoscale. Physically, this is attributed to the presence of a significant ferromagnetic coupling, the so-called direct exchange, which fully compensates ubiquitous antiferromagnetic interactions of the superexchange origin. Having a nonlocal nature, the direct exchange was previously ignored because it cannot be captured within the conventional density functional methods and significantly challenges ground state models earlier proposed for Sn/SiC(0001). Furthermore, heavy adatoms induce strong spin-orbit coupling, which leads to a highly anisotropic form of the spin Hamiltonian, in which the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) is dominant. The latter is suggested to be responsible for the formation of a nanoskyrmion state at realistic magnetic fields and temperatures. © 2018 American Physical Society.