Aspects herein are directed to nucleating skyrmions in spintronic materials by dynamic manipulation of an in-plane magnetic field and related design of prototype devices for spintronic memory and processing. Different from conventional phase transition methods, nucleating and manipulating skyrmion using in-plane fields and spin current pulses is described. For example, in a material with rotatable anisotropy and asymmetry geometric confinement, a skyrmion can be nucleated by switching the in-plane fields. This has been experimentally confirmed in a centrosymmetric magnet, Fe3Sn2, with an engineered thickness gradient.