Interfacial roughness driven manipulation of magnetic anisotropy and coercivity in ultrathin thulium iron garnet films

We have investigated the magnetic properties of thulium iron garnet (Tm3Fe5O12, TmIG) thin films grown on {111} gadolinium gallium garnet (Gd3Ga5O12, GGG) substrates fabricated via the facing target sputtering method. The annealing temperature (Ta), thickness (tf), and roughness were systematically controlled in order to obtain the perfect magnetic properties of the film showing perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and large coercive field, which are the requisites for non-volatile magnetic memory device applications. Here, we demonstrated that the Ta acts as the crucial parameter both for obtaining the high quality of the film surface and engineering the direction of the magnetic anisotropy from the in-plane to out-of-plane. Through the further optimization process with a function of the tf, we successfully achieved the best condition for the PMA films. Specifically, the sample fabricated at a tf of ≤ 20 nm and Ta of 1000 ℃ showed the perfect PMA. Furthermore, the surface roughness of the substrate mainly contributes to the enhancement of the coercive field of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropic films. We speculate that the drag force from the pinning energy induced by the interfacial roughness retarded the domain wall motion at the TmIG/GGG interface, resulting in enhanced coercivity. [Display omitted] •High quality of sputtered TmIG film which have high PMA property and very smooth surface (RMS = 0.3 nm) was successfully fabricated.•The magnetic anisotropy of TmIG films was methodically controlled by varying the thickness and post annealing temperature.•The interfacial roughness strongly influence to the magnetic coercivity of TmIG film with PMA, but not yttrium iron garnet (YIG) film with IMA property.