GROWTH AND CHARACTERIZATION OF HIGH-PURITY SINGLE-CRYSTALS OF BARIUM FERRITE

High purity single crystals of barium ferrite have been grown with the use of a BaO flux. The detected residual impurities have a total concentration of 130 ppm (wt), of which 100 ppm is due to platinum. While the crystals exhibit occasional inclusions of a barium rich phase, the predominant microstructural defects are voids, which exhibit two geometries; one spherical and one hexagonal. Magnetic and resistivity measurements have yielded values which are comparable to those reported in the literature. Room temperature effective linewidth measurements at 10 GHz indicate that eddy current losses are dominant for disk shaped samples thicker than approximately 0.3 mm. Room temperature FMR linewidth measurements on a sample 0.04 mm thick exhibit a linear frequency response between 55 and 90 GHz, which is consistent with a Landau-Lifshitz damping mechanism.