Helimagnetism in nanometer small bilayer iron islands (Presentation Recording)

We report a novel noncollinear magnetic order in individual nanostructures of a prototypical magnetic material, bilayer iron islands on Cu (111) [1]. Spin-polarized scanning tunnelling microscopy reveals a magnetic stripe phase with a period of 1.28 nm, which is identified as a one-dimensional helical spin order. Ab initio calculations reveal reduced-dimensionality-enhanced long-range antiferromagnetic interactions as the driving force of this spin order. Our findings point at the potential of nanostructured magnets to establish noncollinear magnetic order in a nanostructure, which is magnetically decoupled from the substrate. [1] S.H. Phark, J.A. Fischer, M. Corbetta, D. Sander, K. Nakamura, J. Kirschner, Nature Comm. 5, 5183 (2014).