High-quality single-crystal thulium iron garnet films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy by off-axis sputtering

C. N. Wu; C. C. Tseng; K. Y. Lin; C. K. Cheng; S. L. Yeh; Y. T. Fanchiang; M. Hong; J. Kwo

doi:10.1063/1.5006673

AIP Advances (May 2018)

High-quality single-crystal thulium iron garnet films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy by off-axis sputtering

C. N. Wu,
C. C. Tseng,
K. Y. Lin,
C. K. Cheng,
S. L. Yeh,
Y. T. Fanchiang,
M. Hong,
J. Kwo

Affiliations

C. N. Wu: Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan
C. C. Tseng: Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan
K. Y. Lin: Graduate Institute of Applied Physics and Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
C. K. Cheng: Graduate Institute of Applied Physics and Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
S. L. Yeh: Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan
Y. T. Fanchiang: Graduate Institute of Applied Physics and Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
M. Hong: Graduate Institute of Applied Physics and Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
J. Kwo: Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5006673
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 8, no. 5
pp. 055904 – 055904-6

Abstract

Read online

High-quality single-crystal thulium iron garnet (TmIG) films of 10-30 nm thick were grown by off-axis sputtering at room temperature (RT) followed by post-annealing. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was employed to determine the TmIG film composition to optimize the growth conditions, along with the aid of x-ray diffraction (XRD) structural analysis and atomic force microscope (AFM) for surface morphology. The optimized films exhibited perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and the saturation magnetization at RT was ∼99 emu/cm3, close to the RT bulk value ∼110 emu/cm3 with a very low coercive field of ∼2.4 Oe. We extracted the H⊥ of 1734 Oe and the peak-to-peak linewidth ΔH of ferromagnetic resonance are only about 99 Oe, significantly lower than that of PLD grown TmIG film and bulk single crystals. The high-quality sputtered single-crystal TmIG films show great potential to be integrated with topological insulators or heavy metals with strong spin-orbit coupling for spintronic applications.

Published in AIP Advances

ISSN: 2158-3226 (Online)
Publisher: AIP Publishing LLC
Country of publisher: United States
LCC subjects: Science: Physics
Website: http://aipadvances.aip.org/

About the journal