Giant Magnetoelastic Coupling in a Love Acoustic Waveguide Based on TbCo2 / Fe Co Nanostructured Film on ST-Cut Quartz

Abstract

Coupling between dynamic strain and magnetization in ferromagnetic thin films has attracted special consideration as it presents both intriguing fundamental physics problems and technological importance for potential multi-functional devices and information handling. The dynamic strain can be generated by acoustic waves including bulk, surface or guided waves. In this work, we propose the theoretical and experimental investigation of the interaction of pure shear horizontal (SH) wave with a uniaxial multilayered TbCo2/FeCo thin film in a delay line configuration fabricated on Quartz ST-90X cut. We evaluate theoretically the evolution of phase velocity as a function of magnetic field and experimentally the variation of the transmission coefficient. A piezomagnetic model was developed allowing us to calculate the elastic stiffness constants of the multilayer as a function of the applied magnetic field. The model was also implemented for acoustic waves dispersion curves calculation. We show that the evolution of phase velocity is dominated by the C66 elastic stiffness constant variation as expected for the case of shear horizontal surface wave. The fabricated device let us exciting both fundamental and third harmonic shear mode at 410 MHz and 1.2 GHz, respectively. For both modes, the theoretical results corroborate very well the experimental ones. At 1.2 GHz the mode exhibits a maximum phase velocity shift close to 2.5% and an attenuation reaching 500 dB/cm, for a sensitivity as high as 250 ppm/Oe. The reported theoretical model and experimental results are of tremendous interest for the development of advanced devices for magnetic field sensing applications as well as investigating magnon-phonon interaction at a fundamental level.