Abstract
Yttrium iron garnet (Y3Fe5O12; YIG) has a unique combination of low magnetic damping, high spin-wave conductivity, and insulating properties that make it a highly attractive material for a variety of applications in the fields of magnetics and spintronics. While the room-temperature magnetization dynamics of YIG have been extensively studied, there are limited reports correlating the low-temperature magnetization dynamics to the material structure or growth method. Here we investigate liquid phase epitaxy grown YIG films and their magnetization dynamics at temperatures down to 10 K. We show there is a negligible increase in the ferromagnetic resonance linewidth down to 10 K, which is unique when compared with YIG films grown by other deposition methods. From the broadband ferromagnetic resonance measurements, polarized neutron reflectivity, and scanning transmission electron microscopy, we conclude that these liquid phase epitaxy grown films have negligible rare-earth impurities present, specifically the suppression of Gd diffusion from the Gd3Ga5O12 (GGG) substrate into the Y3Fe5O12 film, and therefore negligible magnetic losses attributed to the slow-relaxation mechanism. Overall, liquid phase epitaxy YIG films have a YIG/GGG interface that is five times sharper and have ten times lower ferromagnetic resonance linewidths below 50 K than comparable YIG films by other deposition methods. Thus, liquid phase epitaxy grown YIG films are ideal for low-temperature experiments/applications that require low magnetic losses, such as quantum transduction and manipulation via magnon coupling.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 054411 |
| Journal | Physical Review Materials |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
A.R.W.-C. and N.X.S. acknowledge financial support from NSF TANMS ERC under Award No. 1160504. A.R.W.-C. was supported by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship of the Office of Naval Research. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists, Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. The SCGSR program is administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) for the DOE. ORISE is managed by ORAU under Contract No. DE-SC0014664. All opinions expressed in this paper are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the policies and views of DOE, ORAU, or ORISE. J.L.H. and J.J.C. were funded through the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (EPiQS Synthesis Award). This work made use of the Cornell Center for Materials Research Shared Facilities which are supported through the NSF MRSEC program (DMR-1719875). The FEI Titan Themis 300 was acquired through NSF-MRI-1429155, with additional support from Cornell University, the Weill Institute, and the Kavli Institute at Cornell. The work of C.D. was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Grant No. 271741898. The work of M.L. was supported by the German Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi) under Grant No. 49MF180119. C.D. thanks O. Surzhenko for preliminary studies on FMR characterization of samples at room temperature and R. Meyer (INNOVENT e.V.) for their technical support. A portion of this research used resources at Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract No. DE-NA0003525. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government. A portion of this research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A.R.W.-C. and V.L. thank Haile Ambaye for his assistance during the setup of the PNR experiment. Additionally, any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of NIST.