Platinum/Yttrium Iron Garnet Inverted Structures for Spin Current Transport

Abstract: 30-80 nm thick yttrium iron garnet (YIG) films are grown by pulsed laser deposition on a 5 nm thick sputtered Pt atop gadolinium gallium garnet substrate (GGG) (110). Upon post-growth rapid thermal annealing, single crystal YIG(110) emerges as if it were epitaxially grown on GGG(110) despite the presence of the intermediate Pt film. The YIG surface shows atomic steps with the root-mean-square roughness of 0.12 nm on flat terraces. Both Pt/YIG and GGG/Pt interfaces are atomically sharp. The resulting YIG(110) films show clear in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy with a well-defined easy axis along <001> and a peak-to-peak ferromagnetic resonance linewidth of 7.5 Oe at 9.32 GHz, similar to YIG epitaxilly grown on GGG. Both spin Hall magnetoresistance and longitudinal spin Seebeck effects in the inverted bilayers indicate excellent Pt/YIG interface quality.