
The rapid advancements of nanofabrication, characterization, and numerical simulations during the last two decades have made it possible to explore a plethora of science and technology applications related to nanomagnet dynamics. They also offer a span of exotic phenomena and stern challenges. Nanomagnets form the building blocks for a gamut of miniaturized energy-efficient devices including data storage, memory, wave-based computing, sensors, and biomedical devices. Our findings provide an arena in which to study antiskyrmions, and should stimulate further research on topological spin textures and their applications. The periodicity of magnetic textures greatly depends on the crystal thickness, and domains with anisotropic sawtooth fractals were observed at the surface of thick crystals and attributed to the interplay between the dipolar interaction and the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction as governed by crystal symmetry. Here we report a new material, Fe1.9Ni0.9Pd0.2P, in a different symmetry class (S4), in which antiskyrmions exist over a wide temperature range that includes room temperature, and transform into skyrmions on changing magnetic field and lamella thickness. However, antiskyrmions have thus far only been observed in a few Heusler compounds with D2d symmetry.


Among them, antiskyrmions possess a unique spin configuration with Bloch-type and Néel-type domain walls owing to anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction in the non-centrosymmetric crystal structure. Topological spin textures have attracted much attention both for fundamental physics and spintronics applications.
