The emergence of a topologically nontrivial vortex-like magnetic structure, the magnetic skyrmion, has launched new concepts for memory devices. Extensive studies have theoretically demonstrated the ability to encode information bits by using a chain of skyrmions in one-dimensional nanostripes. Here, we report experimental observation of the skyrmion chain in FeGe nanostripes by using high-resolution Lorentz transmission electron microscopy. Under an applied magnetic field, we observe that the helical ground states with distorted edge spins evolve into individual skyrmions, which assemble in the form of a chain at low field and move collectively into the interior of the nanostripes at elevated fields. Such a skyrmion chain survives even when the width of the nanostripe is much larger than the size of single skyrmion. This discovery demonstrates a way of skyrmion formation through the edge effect, and might, in the long term, shed light on potential applications.

The Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), which only exists in noncentrosymmetric systems, is responsible for the formation of exotic chiral magnetic states. The absence of DMI in most two-dimensional (2D) magnetic materials is due to their intrinsic inversion symmetry. Here, using first-principles calculations, we demonstrate that significant DMI can be obtained in a series of Janus monolayers of manganese dichalcogenides MnXY (X/Y = S, Se, Te, X ≠ Y) in which the difference between X and Y on the opposites sides of Mn breaks the inversion symmetry. In particular, the DMI amplitudes of MnSeTe and MnSTe are comparable to those of state-of-the-art ferromagnet/heavy metal (FM/HM) heterostructures. In addition, by performing Monte Carlo simulations, we find that at low temperatures the ground states of the MnSeTe and MnSTe monolayers can transform from ferromagnetic states with worm-like magnetic domains into the skyrmion states by applying external magnetic field. At increasing temperature, the skyrmion states starts fluctuating above 50 K before an evolution to a completely disordered structure at higher temperature. The