Micromorphology, microstructure and magnetic properties of sputtered garnet multilayers

The growth technique, the micromorphological and microstructural characterization by means of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and secondary ions mass spectrometry (SIMS) as well as the magnetic properties of a novel class of magnetic multilayers, based on radio frequency (RF) sputtered thin amorphous garnet films, are presented. One, three and five thin film multilayers composed by amorphous pure yttrium iron garnet (a:YIG) and amorphous gadolinium gallium garnet (a:GGG) have been grown on GGG single crystal substrates. The multilayer interfaces have been found to be comparable in both, the three and five-layers structure. Low field susceptibility measurements, showed a paramagnetic behavior for the single layer YIG film. For the three and five layers samples, irreversibility effects were observed, giving evidence of magnetic clusters at the interface YIG/GGG