Correlating the Nanoscale Structural, Magnetic and Magneto-Transport Properties in SrRuO3-Based Perovskite Thin Films: Implications for Oxide Skyrmion Devices

We investigated the structural and magnetic properties of bare SrRuO3 (SRO) ultra-thin films and SrRuO3/SrIrO3/SrZrO3 (SRO/SIO/SZO: RIZ) trilayer heterostructures between 10 K and 80 K, by comparing macroscopic data using magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) and magneto-transport (anomalous Hall effect: AHE), with nanoscale fingerprints when applying non-contact scanning force microscopy (nc-SFM) and magnetic force microscopy (MFM). SRO and RIZ ultra-thin films were epitaxially grown at 650°C onto vicinal SrTiO3 (100) single-crystalline substrates to a nominal thickness of 4 and 4/2/2 unit cells (uc), respectively. Our correlated analysis allows associating topographic sample features of overgrown individual layers to their residual magnetization, as is shown here to be relevant for interpreting the macroscopic AHE data. Although the hump-like features in the AHE suggest a magnetically textured skyrmion phase to exist around 55 K associated to the topological Hall effect (THE), both our MOKE and MFM data ca...