Possible emergence of a skyrmion phase in ferroelectric GaMo4S8

Hui-Min Zhang, Jun Chen, Paolo Barone, Kunihiko Yamauchi, Shuai Dong, and Silvia Picozzi
Phys. Rev. B 99, 214427 – Published 20 June 2019

Abstract

Polar lacunar spinels, such as GaV4S8 and GaV4Se8, were proposed to host skyrmion phases under magnetic field. In this work, we put forward, as a candidate for Néel-type skyrmion lattice, the isostructural GaMo4S8, which is systematically studied via both first-principles calculations and Monte Carlo simulations of a model Hamiltonian. Electric polarization, driven by the Jahn-Teller distortion, is predicted to arise in GaMo4S8, showing a comparable size but an opposite sign with respect to that evaluated in V-based counterparts and explained in terms of different electron counting arguments and resulting distortions. Interestingly, a larger spin-orbit coupling of 4d orbitals with respect to 3d orbitals in vanadium spinels leads to stronger Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, which are beneficial to stabilize a cycloidal spin texture, as well as smaller-sized skyrmions (radius<10nm). Furthermore, the possibly large exchange anisotropy of GaMo4S8 may lead to a ferroelectric-ferromagnetic ground state as an alternative to the ferroelectric-skyrmionic one, thus calling for further experimental verification.

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  • Received 29 March 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.99.214427

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Hui-Min Zhang1,2, Jun Chen1, Paolo Barone2, Kunihiko Yamauchi3, Shuai Dong1,*, and Silvia Picozzi2,†

  • 1School of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
  • 2Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Institute for Superconducing and Innovative Materials and devices (CNR-SPIN), c/o University “G. D’Annunzio,” Chieti 66100, Italy
  • 3Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, Osaka University, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan

  • *sdong@seu.edu.cn
  • silvia.picozzi@spin.cnr.it

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Issue

Vol. 99, Iss. 21 — 1 June 2019

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