Predicting new iron garnet thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Abstract

Magnetic iron garnets are insulators with low Gilbert damping with many applications in spintronics. Many emerging spintronic applications require perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) although garnets have only a few PMA types (i.e. terbium and samarium garnet). More and stable PMA garnet options are needed for investigating new spintronic phenomena. In this study, we predict 20 new epitaxial magnetic iron garnet film/substrate pairs with stable PMA at room temperature. The effective anisotropy energies of 10 different garnet films that are lattice-matched to 5 different commercially available garnet substrates (total 50 film/substrate pairs) have been calculated using shape, magnetoelastic and magnetocrystalline anisotropy terms. Strain type, tensile or compressive depending on substrate choice, as well as the sign and the magnitude of the magnetostriction constants of garnets determine if a garnet film may possess PMA. We show the conditions in which Samarium, Gadolinium, Terbium, Holmium, Dysprosium and Thulium garnets may possess PMA on the investigated garnet substrate types. New PMA garnet films with tunable saturation moment and field may improve spin-orbit torque memory and compensated magnonic thin film devices.