Effect of Substrate on Spin-Wave Propagation Properties in Ferrimagnetic Thulium Iron Garnet Thin Films

Abstract

Rare-earth iron garnets have distinctive spin-wave (SW) properties such as low magnetic damping and long SW coherence length making them ideal candidates for magnonics. Among them, thulium iron garnet (TmIG) is a ferrimagnetic insulator with unique magnetic properties including perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and topological hall effect at room temperature when grown down to a few nanometers, extending its application to magnon spintronics. Here, the SW propagation properties of TmIG films (thickness of 7-34 nm) grown on GGG and sGGG substrates are studied at room temperature. Magnetic measurements show in-plane magnetic anisotropy for TmIG films grown on GGG and out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy for films grown on sGGG substrates with PMA. SW electrical transmission spectroscopy measurements on TmIG/GGG films unveil magnetostatic surface spin waves (MSSWs) propagating up to 80 um with a SW group velocity of 2-8 km s^-1. Intriguingly, these MSSWs exhibit nonreciprocal propagation, opening new applications in SW functional devices. TmIG films grown on sGGG substrates exhibit forward volume spin waves with a reciprocal propagation behavior up to 32 um.