Development of an annealing process for rapid fabrication of solution-based Y3Fe5O12 thin films

•Polycrystalline YIG/Si was fabricated via the MOD method followed by a rapid annealing process.•The thickness of YIG films was controlled via the number of coating/annealing cycles.•The pyrolysis step is a crucible factor to decide the densification of chemical-grown YIG films.•The SSR of 94.25 nm/A has been obtained for Pt(4 nm)/YIG(224.1 nm) sample. In many industries, chemical-based fabrication is a preferred approach because mass production is possible at minimal cost. Here, we optimize the fabrication of solution-based Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) films on silicon substrates. This approach reduces the annealing time by more than eight-fold compared with the duration of conventional annealing. The film cross-section morphologies, crystallinities, and magnetic properties confirmed the growth of polycrystalline YIG films with phases similar to the phases of tube furnace-annealed YIG, along with a few additional X-ray diffraction peaks. Spin thermoelectric performance was also studied; we measured the spin Seebeck effects using a platinum layer to detect spin. The spin Seebeck resistivity of 224,1-nm-thick YIG films was 94,25 nm/A, comparable with the reported values for Y3Fe5O12/Silicon and Y3Fe5O12/Gd3Ga5O12 films. This suggests that our annealing process can be used to fabricate YIG films for spin thermoelectric applications.