Strain-Tunable Magnetic Anisotropy in Sputtered Thulium Iron Garnet (TIG) Thin Films and TIG/Au/TIG Trilayers

ORAL

Abstract

Ferromagnetic insulator thin films have been explored for developing spintronic devices. When combined with quantum materials, the strongly correlated interaction from the proximitized interface results in intense local magnetic fields which modulates them to displaying new interface physical phenomena. We investigate ways to tune the magnetic anisotropy in TIG films by selecting their thickness, substrate, and annealing conditions. When deposited over (111) GGG, they present a negative magnetostriction constant which favors a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). While PMA allows high magnetic storage density in hard disk drives, it is required for breaking the time-reversal symmetry in topological insulators (TIs) to aim towards quantized anomalous Hall state in TIs. Controlling the film preparation parameters we observed that TIG films under compressive strain display an in-plane magnetic anisotropy, whereas films under tensile strain demonstrated PMA. These results led to the successful fabrication of TIG/Au/TIG magnon valve structures with independent magnetic switching of each TIG layer.

*This work was supported by ARO (W911NF-19-2-0041 and W911NF-19-2-0015), NSF (DMR 1700137), ONR (N00014-16-1-2657), and CAPES (Gilvania Vilela/POS-DOC-88881.120327/2016-01), FACEPE, CNPq.

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Presenters

  • Gilvania Da Silva Vilela

    • Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, MIT and Universidade de Pernambuco

Authors

  • Gilvania Da Silva Vilela

    • Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, MIT and Universidade de Pernambuco

  • HANG CHI

    • Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, and U.S. Army CCDC, MIT and Army Research Laboratory

  • Gregory Stephen

    • Laboratory for Physical Sciences
    • Department of Physics, Northeastern University

  • Charles Settens

    • Materials Research Laboratory, MIT

  • Preston Zhou

    • Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology

  • Yunbo Ou

    • Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, MIT
    • Tsinghua University

  • Dhavala Suri

    • Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, MIT
    • MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT

  • Don Heiman

    • Department of Physics, Northeastern University

  • Jagadeesh Moodera

    • Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory, and Department of Physics, MIT
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT