Y3Fe5O12 film with multi-domain epitaxy on single-crystalline LiNbO3 substrate

Y3Fe5O12 is one of the magnetic insulators that can realize high-speed and low-power-consuming spintronics devices. However, it is hard to prepare a high-quality Y3Fe5O12 film via a conventional sputtering process owing to its low crystalline texture, which leads to a crucial increase in the Gilbert damping constant. Moreover, a single crystalline Gd3Ga5O12 substrate, whose lattice constant is well matched with Y3Fe5O12, is indispensable to improve the crystallinity of the Y3Fe5O12 film. In this article, we demonstrated an epitaxial growth of multiple domains for a 30-nm-thick Y3Fe5O12 film by means of magnetron sputtering on a single crystalline 128° Y–X LiNbO3 substrate , which has been widely utilized in surface acoustic wave devices. From the pole figure of x-ray diffraction, an oblique epitaxial growth of Y3Fe5O12(400) is successfully observed on the 128° Y–X LiNbO3 substrate after a high-temperature post-annealing. The saturation magnetization is equivalent to the value of the epitaxial Y3Fe5O12 film on the Gd3Ga5O12 substrate. The relatively low effective Gilbert damping constant of 0.0039 also supports the high crystalline texture of the Y3Fe5O12 film. The developed growth technique will pave the way for the application of the Y3Fe5O12 film on magneto-acoustic devices.