Emergence of room temperature stable skyrmionic bubbles in the rare earth based REMn2Ge2 (RE = Ce, Pr, and Nd) magnets

Skyrmionic spin configurations, including skyrmions and skyrmionic bubbles, have attracted much attention for their intriguing magneto-electrical properties. To date, most skyrmionic spin configurations are observed in transition metal based magnets, the correlations between topological structures and f orbital electrons are still unclear due to the lack of rare earth (RE) based magnets hosting skyrmionic spin configurations, especially at room temperature. Here, a family of RE-based intermetallics compounds, REMn2Ge2 (RE = Ce, Pr, and Nd) magnets, are demonstrated to be able to host skyrmionic bubbles in a wide temperature range of 220-320 K. By further applying a field-cooling procedure, high-density hexagonal lattices of skyrmionic bubbles are realized under zero magnetic field. By combing the micromagnetic simulations, the rotation of easy-magnetized axis plays a dominated role for present REMn2Ge2 magnets, plays a dominated role in the temperature and field induced magnetic domain evolutions. The skyrmionic spin configurations observed in the RE-based magnets can overcome the limiting factors in terms of material variations, operating temperature, and working magnetic field, which is of great significance to practical applications of the skyrmionic spin configurations. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.