Development of an annealing process for rapid fabrication of solution-based Y3Fe5O12 thin films

In many industries, chemical-based fabrication is a preferred approach because mass production is possible at minimal cost. Here, we optimize the fabrication of solution-based Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) films on silicon substrates. This approach reduces the annealing time by more than eight-fold compared with the duration of conventional annealing. The film cross-section morphologies, crystallinities, and magnetic properties confirmed the growth of polycrystalline YIG films with phases similar to the phases of tube furnace-annealed YIG, along with a few additional X-ray diffraction peaks. Spin thermoelectric performance was also studied; we measured the spin Seebeck effects using a platinum layer to detect spin. The spin Seebeck resistivity of 224,1-nm-thick YIG films was 94,25 nm/A, comparable with the reported values for Y3Fe5O12/Silicon and Y3Fe5O12/Gd3Ga5O12 films. This suggests that our annealing process can be used to fabricate YIG films for spin thermoelectric applications.