Liquid-Phase Epitaxial Growth of 3 in Diameter Bismuth-Doped Thulium Iron Garnet Films for Magneto-Optical Applications

Author

Dainan Zhang ; Bing Mei ; Huaiwu Zhang ; Qinghui Yang ; Yiheng Rao

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. of Electron. Thin Films & Integrated Devices, Univ. of Electron. Sci. & Technol., Chengdu, China

Volume

51

Issue

11

fYear

2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

3

Abstract

We report here the successful growth of a 3 in diameter magneto-optical (MO) garnet film having the composition (BiTm)₃Fe₅O₁₂ by use of the liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE) method. In these experiments, Bi₂O₃ has been used as the fluxing agent thus omitting the use of PbO, which is highly toxic and often detrimental to the quality of film growth. Films with low defect concentration, mirror-like optical surface, high Faraday rotation angle (FRA), and large thicknesses have been obtained by optimizing the flux ratio and LPE process parameters. The thicknesses of the films have been demonstrated to reach 50-60 μm for 3 in GGG substrates. The lattice parameter mismatch between Bi-doped TmIG (Bi:TmIG) film and the GGG substrate reaches a minimum resulting in optimal magnetic and MO properties at a growth rate of 0.87 μm/min. The largest FRA of 0.54°/μm corresponds to an external magnetic field of 25 Oe. The saturation magnetization (4πM_s), 48 emu/cm³, and coercivity (Hc), 2.5 Oe, of Bi:TmIG film reach respective maximum and minimum values for the growth rate 0.87 μm/min.

Keywords

Faraday effect; bismuth compounds; coercive force; doping profiles; garnets; lattice constants; liquid phase epitaxial growth; magnetic epitaxial layers; magnetic hysteresis; surface magnetism; surface morphology; thulium compounds; (BiTm)₃Fe₅O₁₂; Faraday rotation angle; Gd₃Ga₅O₁₂; LPE; bismuth-doped thulium iron garnet films; coercivity; defect concentration; external magnetic field; film composition; film growth; film thicknesses; fluxing agent; lattice parameter mismatch; liquid-phase epitaxial growth; magnetic properties; magneto-optical applications; mirror-like optical surface; saturation magnetization; Bismuth; Garnet films; Iron; Lattices; Magnetic properties; Substrates; Faraday rotation angle; Faraday rotation angle (FRA); Garnet films; Liquid phase epitaxy; Magneto-optical property; garnet films; liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE); magneto-optical (MO) property;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMAG.2015.2439714

Filename

7115965