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Updated: Jan 7, 2026

Formation of Thick Dense Yttrium Iron Garnet Films Using Aerosol Deposition
Published on: May 15, 2015
Magnetotaxial Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy and Enhanced Faraday Rotation in Ion Beam Sputtered
Taichi Goto1, Takumi Koguchi1,2,3, Yuki Yoshihara1,2,3
1Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8577, Japan.
None:
Ferrimagnetic iron garnets are valuable for photonic and spintronic devices because of their large magnetooptical (MO) effects and tunable magnetic anisotropy and domain structures. In particular, cerium-substituted yttrium iron garnet (Ce:YIG) has an excellent MO figure of merit in the near-infrared region. However, achieving perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in Ce:YIG films has conventionally relied on strain engineering, constraining the relationship between substrate lattice parameters and magnetic properties. We demonstrate strain-independent PMA in epitaxially grown Ce:YIG (Ce0.9Y2.1Fe5O12) films on two different (111)-oriented garnet substrates using ion beam sputtering. Despite opposite strain states (tensile and compressive), both films exhibit robust PMA with labyrinth-shaped magnetic domains with widths of 219 nm. Comprehensive surface and interface characterization reveals high-quality epitaxial growth with coherent film-substrate interfaces. The films demonstrated superior MO performance with a Faraday rotation of -1.05°/μm and a figure of merit of 74.7°/dB at 1064 nm wavelength. Detailed anisotropy analysis reveals that magnetotaxial (growth-induced) anisotropy of up to ∼30 kJ/m3 dominates over magnetoelastic contributions, enabling strain-independent PMA formation. Three-dimensional (3D) micromagnetic simulations confirm mixed Néel-Bloch domain wall configurations. This work demonstrates that PMA in Ce:YIG films can be achieved through magnetotaxial anisotropy independent of the substrate strain state, providing valuable insights for magnetooptical material design.
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