Pseudomorphic Yttrium Iron Garnet Thin Films With Low Damping and Inhomogeneous Linewidth Broadening

Author

Howe, Brandon M. ; Emori, Satoru ; Hyung-Min Jeon ; Oxholm, Trevor M. ; Jones, John G. ; Mahalingam, Krishnamurthy ; Yan Zhuang ; Sun, Nian X. ; Brown, Gail J.

Author_Institution

Air Force Res. Lab., Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Patterson, OH, USA

Volume

6

fYear

2015

fDate

2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

Nanometer-thick yttrium iron garnet films, grown on gadolinium gallium garnet substrates by pulsed laser deposition, exhibit remarkably high crystallinity and atomically smooth surfaces. The pseudomorphic growth mechanism leads to large negative out-of-plane uniaxial anisotropy, narrow resonance linewidths, and minimal damping. Magnetic resonance measurements indicate that both the Gilbert damping parameter α and inhomogeneous linewidth broadening ΔH_pp,0 are consistently low for films of various thicknesses. Even at film thickness ≈ 20 nm, we attain α ≈ 2 x 10^-4 and ΔH_pp,0 ≈ 1 Oe, which are among the lowest values ever reported.

Keywords

ferromagnetic resonance; garnets; magnetic thin films; pulsed laser deposition; yttrium compounds; Gilbert damping parameter; Y₃Fe₅O₁₂; atomically smooth surfaces; crystallinity; gadolinium gallium garnet substrates; inhomogeneous linewidth broadening; magnetic resonance measurements; nanometer-thick yttrium iron garnet films; narrow resonance linewidths; out-of-plane uniaxial anisotropy; pseudomorphic growth; pseudomorphic yttrium iron garnet thin films; pulsed laser deposition; Damping; Films; Garnets; Iron; Lattices; Nonhomogeneous media; Substrates; Magnetodynamics; ferromagnetic resonance; magnetic damping; yttrium iron garnet;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1949-307X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMAG.2015.2449260

Filename

7132706