Antiferromagnetic half-skyrmions and bimerons at room temperature

In the quest for post-CMOS technologies, ferromagnetic skyrmions and their-particles have shown great promise as topologically protected solitonic carriers in memory-in-logic or neuromorphic devices. However, the of dipolar fields in ferromagnets, restricting the formation of-small topological textures, and the deleterious skyrmion Hall effect when by spin torques have thus far inhibited their practical implementations. analogues, which are predicted to demonstrate relativistic, fast deflection-free motion and size scaling have recently come into focus, but their experimental realizations in natural antiferromagnetic are yet to emerge. Here, we demonstrate a family of topological spin-textures in \α-Fe₂O₃ - an earth-abundant insulator - capped with a Pt over-layer. By exploiting a first-order of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, we stabilize exotic merons-antimerons(half-skyrmions), and bimerons, which can be erased by magnetic fields and-generated by temperature cycling. These structures have characteristic sizes the range ~100 nm that can be chemically controlled via precise tuning of exchange and anisotropy, with pathway to further scaling. Driven by-based spin torques from the heavy-metal over-layer, some of these AFM could emerge as prime candidates for low-energy antiferromagnetic at room temperature.