Ferromagnetic resonance in films with growth induced anisotropy

University dissertation from Stockholm : KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Abstract: This thesis discusses two different magnetic materials: epitaxial yttrium iron garnet (YIG) and heteromorphous CoFeB-SiO2 films.YIG films were grown by pulse laser deposition (PLD) techniques onto gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG) substrates of (111) and (001) crystal orientations. Using stoichiometric and overstoichiometric ablative targets, we developed two types of YIG submicron films. The films grown from overstoichiometric targets have magnetic properties slightly different from standard liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) YIGs. They also demonstrate good substrate matching and approximately 6% nonstoichiometry. In contrary, films grown from stoichiometric targets posses surprisingly high values of uniaxial anisotropy, meanwhile cubic anisotropy is reduced several times. These films also reveal strong lattice distortions and nonstoichiometry around 17%.Employing Weiss molecular field theory and single-ion anisotropy model we determined the preferential occupancy of the octahedral [a] positions in the YIG cubic lattices by Fe3+ vacancies. The vacancies were found to be preferentially oriented along the growth direction perpendicular to the film surface. We called this effect “deformation blockade”.Different magnetostatic surface wave (MSSW) filters were also demonstrated. The filters employ high uniaxial anisotropy in YIG submicron films with magnetic losses ?H ~ 1 Oe. Heteromorphous CoFeB-SiO2 films were deposited onto glass substrates employing carrousel magnetron sputtering. This novel technique allows amorphous films fabrication with record high in-plane anisotropy. The induced anisotropy fields here are approximately dozen times greater the values achieved using conventional growth technique when external bias field is applied during deposition process.Interesting observations were made studying CoFeB-SiO2 magnetization dynamics in the wide frequency range from 500 kHz up to 15 GHz.  Two different anomalies of the magnetic susceptibility were found at the field of in-plane anisotropy Hp and critical field Hcr (0 < Hcr < Hp). We explained the anomalies appearance by sequence of the domain walls transformations so that Néel-Bloch-Néel domain wall transition stands for the instability at H = ±Hcr and transition from the uniformly magnetized state to the domain state with Néel domain wall and vice versa is responsible for the instability at H = ±Hp.

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