Imaging and Tailoring the Chirality of Domain Walls in Magnetic Films

Electric-current-induced magnetization switching is a keystone concept in the development of spintronics devices. In the last few years this field has experienced a significant boost with the discovery of ultrafast domain wall motions and very low threshold currents in structures designed to stabilize chiral spin textures. Imaging domain-wall spin textures in situ, while fabricating magnetic multilayer structures, is a powerful way to investigate the forces stabilizing this type of chirality, and informs strategies to engineer structures with controlled spin textures. Here, recent results applying spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy to image chiral domain walls in magnetic multilayer films are summarized. Providing a way to measure the strength of the asymmetric exchange interaction that causes the chirality, this approach can be used to tailor the texture and handedness of magnetic domain walls by interface engineering. These results advance understanding of the underlying physics and offer new insights toward the design of spintronic devices.