Thin yttrium iron garnet films grown by pulsed laser deposition: Crystal structure, static, and dynamic magnetic properties

Abstract

Pulsed laser deposition has been used to grow thin (10–84 nm) epitaxial layers of Yttrium Iron Garnet Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) on (111)–oriented Gadolinium Gallium Garnet substrates at different growth conditions. Atomic force microscopy showed flat surface morphology both on micrometer and nanometer scales. X-ray diffraction measurements revealed that the films are coherent with the substrate in the interface plane. The interplane distance in the [111] direction was found to be by 1.2% larger than expected for YIG stoichiometric pseudomorphic film indicating presence of rhombohedral distortion in this direction. Polar Kerr effect and ferromagnetic resonance measurements showed existence of additional magnetic anisotropy, which adds to the demagnetizing field to keep magnetization vector in the film plane. The origin of the magnetic anisotropy is related to the strain in YIG films observed by XRD. Magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements revealed important role of magnetization rotation during magnetization reversal. An unusual fine structure of microwave magnetic resonance spectra has been observed in the film grown at reduced (0.5 mTorr) oxygen pressure. Surface spin wave propagation has been demonstrated in the in-plane magnetized films.

Magnetization reversal in YIG/GGG(111) nanoheterostructures grown by laser molecular beam epitaxy

“…Very small coercive filed values below 2 Oe typical for the YIG/GGG samples studied in the present work are in good agreement with earlier reports [34]. The absolute value of saturation magnetization (4πM s ≈1350 G) for the shown YIG film is noticeably lower than 4πM s ≈1750 G reported for the bulk YIG crystals [2] but is in agreement with 4πM s ≈ 1100–1500 G values reported in our earlier studies of YIG films grown at 650 °C [34]. The decreased magnetization in YIG layers may be caused by enhanced defect density and decreased number of 3d bonds at the upper and lower interfaces.…”

Role of gallium diffusion in the formation of a magnetically dead layer at the Y3Fe5O12/Gd3Ga5Korovin1, Bursian2, Lutsev3 et al. 2018Phys. Rev. MaterialsSelf Cite442130View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…[6] that SW damping in a 10 nm epitaxial YIG layer can be as low as α = 3.6 × 10 −5 , approaching the bulk value obtained for YIG single crystals grown by the Czochralski method. Various deposition techniques including laser molecular beam epitaxy (LMBE) have been used [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] in recent years to grow high-quality YIG films onto gadolinium gallium garnet (Gd 3 Ga 5 O 12 , GGG) substrates. Despite the fact that GGG is very well lattice matched to YIG ( a/a = 6 × 10 −4 ), it was claimed in a number of studies that the crystal structure and magnetic properties of YIG nanolayers can be quite different * Correspondence: suturin@mail.ioffe.ru from the bulk.…”

Terahertz response of gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG) and gadolinium scandium gallium garnet (SGGG)

“…Owing to the closely matched lattice structures, crystalline (S)GGG is widely used as the growth substrate for a general class of iron garnets described by X 3 Fe 5 O 12 (XIG) [16,17] with spintronic applications, such as TIG [18][19][20][21][22], YIG [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35], BIG [36][37][38], HIG [39], TbIG [40] and GdIG [41] (X = Tm, Yb, Bi, Ho, Tb and Gd, respectively). The epitaxial strain induced by the (S)GGG substrate, tunable by the B-site substitution, can be used to effectively manipulate the magnetization and magnetic easy-axis of the XIG films.…”