Perpendicularly magnetized YIG films with small Gilbert damping constant and anomalous spin transport properties

TL;DR

This study reports the growth of perpendicularly magnetized YIG films with ultra-low Gilbert damping on strain-matched substrates, revealing enhanced spin transport properties and non-collinear magnetic order at interfaces, promising for spintronics.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates strain-induced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in ultrathin YIG films with minimal damping and novel spin transport phenomena at interfaces, without requiring preprocessing.

Findings

YIG films exhibit perpendicular magnetic anisotropy due to epitaxial strain.

Ultra-low Gilbert damping constant observed in the films.

Enhanced spin mixing conductance and non-monotonic anomalous Hall effect detected.

Abstract

The Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) have recently attracted a great deal of attention for spintronics applications. Here, we report the induced PMA in the ultrathin YIG films grown on (Gd2.6Ca0.4)(Ga4.1Mg0.25Zr0.65)O12 (SGGG) substrates by epitaxial strain without preprocessing. Reciprocal space mapping shows that the films are lattice-matched to the substrates without strain relaxation. Through ferromagnetic resonance and polarized neutron reflectometry measurements, we find that these YIG films have ultra-low Gilbert damping constant with a magnetic dead layer as thin as about 0.3 nm at the YIG/SGGG interfaces. Moreover, the transport behavior of the Pt/YIG/SGGG films reveals an enhancement of spin mixing conductance and a large non-monotonic magnetic field dependence of anomalous Hall effect as compared with the Pt/YIG/Gd3Ga5O12 (GGG) films. The non-monotonic anomalous Hall signal is extracted in the temperature range from 150 to 350 K, which has been ascribed to the possible non-collinear magnetic order at the Pt/YIG interface induced by uniaxial strain.