Preparation of thulium iron garnet ceramics and investigation of spin transport properties in thin films

Compensated ferrimagnetic thulium iron garnet ceramics were prepared by the sol-gel method, which is significantly better than conventional solid-state reactions. Saturation magnetization yielded a maximum of 16.7 emu/g for specimens sintered at 900 °C. Subsequently, using the TmIG bulk as the target, an epitaxial film was grown by pulsed laser deposition. Furthermore, the spin transport properties of film with an attached 5 nm-thick platinum layer were studied in terms of longitudinal spin Seebeck effect (LSSE) and spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR). The LSSE coefficient was as high as 0.38 μV/K and the SMR was 0.0072%. These results indicated that the bulk material and thin film presented excellent qualities, which are extremely important for the fundamental investigation of novel spin transport behaviour in compensated ferrimagnetic insulators. These results also provide more alternatives for spintronic materials.