Growth of Yttrium Iron Garnet on SiO2

The authors performed several studies on the quality of yttrium iron garnet thin films grown on silicon dioxide via radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The use of rapid thermal annealing as the postdeposition anneal was explored for different thicknesses, and a surprisingly narrow temperature window was found to produce the highest saturation magnetization for ultrathin films. Transmission electron microscopy imaging visually shows a correlation between the saturation magnetization, and the structure of the film and shows a change in structure when annealing above the temperature window.