Electrically switchable Rashba-type Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and skyrmion in two-dimensional magnetoelectric multiferroics

Abstract: Realizing topological magnetism and its electric control are intensive topics in the spintronics due to their promising applications in information storage and logic technologies. Here we unveil that both can be achieved in the two-dimensional (2D) magnetoelectric multiferroics. Using first-principles calculations, we show that strong Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), which is the key ingredient for the formation of exotic chiral magnetism, could be induced in 2D multiferroics with vertical electric polarization via Rashba effect. We verify that such significant DMI can promote sub-10 nm skyrmion in 2D multiferroics with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy such as CrN monolayer. In addition, the presence of both magnetization and electric polarization in 2D multiferroics provides us unique opportunity for the effective electric control of both strength and chirality of DMI and thereby the topological magnetism. As an example, we introduce the four multiferroic skyrmions with different chirality and polarity that can be manipulated by external field.