Structural and magnetic properties of high quality single crystalline YIG thin film: A comparison with the bulk YIG

Structural, magnetic and magnetization dynamics studies of Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) bulk target and thin film grown on single crystalline Gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG, (111)) substrate by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) are reported. Ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) measurements have been performed on target and post-annealed film. The saturation magnetization (Ms) of film and target varied abruptly. There is an induced magneto crystalline anisotropy in YIG single crystalline thin film. On the other hand the bulk target doesn’t have any type of magneto crystalline anisotropy. Due to this induced anisotropy and single crystalline nature of YIG thin film, it shows a very narrow FMR line width (25 Gauss) and simultaneously very low Gilbert damping constant (5×10−4). Bulk target have a very broad FMR linewidth (850 Gauss) due to larger number of magnetic domains and defects. YIG thin film grown on GGG substrate shows very low damping and hence can be used for magnonics and narrow band microwave filters.