Microwave magnetic properties of soft magnetic thin films

Abstract

We review our works that focus on the microwave magnetic properties of metallic, ferrite and granular thin films. Soft magnetic material with large permeability and low energy loss in the GHz range is a challenge for the inforcom technologies. GHz magnetic properties of the soft magnetic thin films with in-plane anisotropy were investigated. It is found that several hundreds of permeability at the GHz frequency was achieved for Co100−xZrx and Co90Nb10 metallic thin films because of their high saturation magnetization, and an adjustable resonance frequency from 1.3 to 4.9 GHz was obtained. Compared with the metallic thin films, the weaker saturation magnetization of Ni-Zn ferrite thin films results in several tens of permeability at the GHz frequency, but the larger resistivity of the ferrite prepared in situ without any heating treatments has lower energy loss. In order to obtain materials with large permeability and low energy loss in the GHz range, the [CoFe-NiZn ferrite] composite granular thin films were investigated, where the advantage of higher saturation magnetization for the metallic alloy and the high resistivity as well as high saturation magnetization for the ferrite results in a good GHz magnetic performance.