Ultra Thin Films of Yttrium Iron Garnet with Very Low Damping: A Review

Thin Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG) is a promising material for integrated magnonics. In order to introduce YIG into nanofabrication processes it is necessary to fabricate very thin YIG films with a thickness well below 100 nm while retaining the extraordinary magnetic properties of the material, especially its long magnon lifetime and spin wave propagation length. Here, we give a brief introduction into the topic and we review and discuss the various results published over the last decade in this area. Especially for ultrathin films it turns out that pulsed layer deposition and sputtering are the most promising candidates. In addition, we discuss the application of room temperature deposition and annealing for lift-off based nanopatterning and the properties of nanostructures obtained by this method over the past years.