Substrate-Dependent Anisotropy and Damping in Epitaxial Bismuth Yttrium Iron Garnet Thin Films

Abstract

Iron garnets that combine robust perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) with low Gilbert damping are desirable for studies of magnetization dynamics as well as spintronic device development. This paper reports the magnetic properties of low-damping bismuth-substituted iron garnet thin films (Bi0.8Y2.2Fe5O12) grown on a series of single-crystal gallium garnet substrates. The anisotropy is dominated by magnetoelastic and growth-induced contributions. Both stripe and triangular domains form during field cycling of PMA films, with triangular domains evident in films with higher PMA. Ferromagnetic resonance measurements show damping as low as 1.3 × 10−4 with linewidths of 2.7 to 5.0 mT. The lower bound for the spin-mixing conductance of BiYIG/Pt bilayers is similar to that of other iron garnet/Pt bilayers.