Magnetic skyrmions are topologically stable whirlpool-like spin textures that offer great promise as information carriers for future spintronics devices. To enable such applications, the conventional detection of single skyrmions in nanostructured elements has to be achieved, but it’s still unexploited so far.

Researchers from the High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CHMFL) reported, for the first time, the use of conventional electrical method to detect the annihilation and creation of single skyrmion in single-crystal MnSi nanowires. In the study, the researchers achieved this by measuring the magnetoreistance in ultra-narrow MnSi nanowires. Quantized jumps in magnetoresistance versus magnetic field curves were observed. By tracking the size dependence of the jump number and using the Monte Carlo simulation, researchers inferred that skyrmions were assembled into cluster states with tunable number of skyrmions. These results enable an electric reading of the number of skymions in the cluster states, thus laying a solid foundation to realize skyrmion-based memory devices.

This study was conducted by Prof. TIAN's group in CHMFL cooperated with Prof. JIN's group in the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. ZANG Jiadong in the Johns Hopkins University.

These results entitled were published in Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/ncomms8637), entitled “Electrical Probing of Field-Driven Cascading Quantized Transitions of Skyrmion Cluster States in MnSi Nanowires”.