Influence of structure and cation distribution on magnetic anisotropy and damping in Zn/Al doped nickel ferrites

Abstract

An in-depth analysis of Zn/Al doped nickel ferrites grown by reactive magnetron sputtering is relevant due to their promising characteristics for applications in spintronics. The material is insulating and ferromagnetic at room temperature with an additional low magnetic damping. By studying the complex interplay between strain and cation distribution their impact on the magnetic properties, i.e. anisotropy, damping and g-factor is unravelled. In particular, a strong influence of the lattice site occupation of Ni${}_{\text{Td}}^{2+}$ and cation coordination of Fe${}_{\text{Oh}}^{2+}$ on the intrinsic damping is found. Furthermore, the critical role of the incorporation of Zn${}^{2+}$ and Al${}^{3+}$ is evidenced by comparison with a sample of altered composition. Especially, the dopant Zn${}^{2+}$ is evidenced as a tuning factor for Ni${}_{\text{Td}}^{2+}$ and therefore unquenched orbital moments directly controlling the g-factor. A strain-independent reduction of the magnetic anisotropy and damping by adapting the cation distribution is demonstrated.

11 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Spin pumping and magnetization dynamics in metallic multilayers
• Sensitive SQUID magnetometry for studying nano-magnetism
• Physical characteristics and cation distribution of NiFe2O4 thin films with high resistivity prepared by reactive co-sputtering
• Accurate high-resolution depth profiling of magnetron sputtered transition metal alloy films containing light species: A multi-method approach

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Nonstanding spin waves in a single rectangular permalloy microstrip under uniform magnetic excitation
• Observation of Coherently Coupled Cation Spin Dynamics in an Insulating Ferrimagnetic Oxide
• Control of site occupancy by variation of the Zn and Al content in NiZnAl ferrite epitaxial films with low magnetic damping
• Quantifying the spin-wave asymmetry in single and double rectangular Ni${}_{80}$Fe${}_{20}$ microstrips by TR-STXM, FMR and micromagnetic simulations