Abstract
Room-temperature skyrmions in the two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnet Fe3GaTe2 (FGaT) hold great promise for spintronics. However, the origin of the necessary Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) within its centrosymmetric lattice remains elusive. Here, we reveal a spontaneous DMI emergence mechanism driven by field cooling (FC) in FGaT and its analog Fe3GeTe2 (FGeT). We show that the commonly used FC process causes the irreversible precipitation of FeTe2 layers on the FGaT surface. This FeTe2/FGaT heterostructure breaks the inversion symmetry, generating a finite interfacial DMI. This phenomenon extends to analogous FGeT, demonstrating its universality. Notably, a threshold thickness governs effective FeTe2 precipitation and subsequent skyrmion formation. Leveraging these findings, we developed an optothermal technique to deterministically write single skyrmions in FGaT without FC. Our findings provides new insights into DMI origins and skyrmion manipulation in ternary tellurides, paving the way for advanced spintronic applications.
Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data for Figs. 1–5 are provided with this paper. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the assistance from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No.2021YFA1200800 to T.Y. and No.2022YFB3403400 to Y.D.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12274067 and 92464101 to C.Z., 12574129 to S.L., 12274016 to Y.D.), the Start-up Funds of Wuhan University to T.Y. the open research fund of Suzhou Laboratory (No.SZLAB-1608-2024-TS019) to C.Z. and the Open Research Fund of the Pulsed High Magnetic Field Facility (Grant No. WHMFC2024017) to S.L. We thank the Core Facility of Wuhan University for their technical support with the MPMS, XRD, and XPS measurements.
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S.X., Y.L. and I.A.M. contributed equally to this work. S.X. designed the experiments with supervision from S.L. and T.Y. H.S. grew the crystal with supervision from Y.D. S.X. fabricated the samples and performed the optical measurements with help from Y.S. and H.L. Y.L. conducted STEM characterization and data analysis with supervision from C.Z. I.A.M. and X.Z. performed the MFM and AFM measurements. K.H. performed theoretical simulations with supervision from Y.C. X.L., and V.L.Z. assisted with data analysis and contributed to the discussion of the results. S.L., C.Z. and T.Y. supervised the project. S.X. and Y.L. co-wrote the manuscript in consultation with all the authors. All the authors discussed the results.
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Xia, S., Luo, Y., Malik, I.A. et al. Spontaneous emergence of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction via field-cooling-induced interface engineering in 2D ferromagnetic ternary tellurides. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71294-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71294-2
