Long-term stability of yttrium-iron garnet films under irradiation by neutrons, protons, deuterons and electrons

Oscillations and waves of magnetization in YIG ferrite films have interesting and useful properties such as a high Q-factor, a wide variety of dispersion laws dependent on the orientation of bias magnetic fields, and a possibility to tune their frequencies in the range of several GHz by changing the magnitude of bias magnetic fields. At the same time, YIG ferrite films are widely used in different electronic devices and equipment that have already found a variety of both space and nuclear applications. So radiation stability investigations of such materials became very important. Ferrite YIG films were irradiated by reactor neutrons, 3 MeV protons and deuterons, and electrons with the energy up to 20 MeV to the fluences 1.8 x 10(19) n/cm(2), 9.6 x 10(15) p/cm(2), 1.1 x 10(16) d/cm(2) and 6.6 x 10(17) e/cm(2), respectively. The radiation effects have been analyzed using the ferromagnetic resonance method. The results of such radiation stability study show clearly that ferrite YIG films, just as devices and equipment based on them, have a long operation life and very high radiation stability. At the same time, parameters and properties of YIG films and microwave ferrite devices that use such films can be changed controllably and, moreover, more reliably than using the traditional grinding. (C) 2007 Ellsevier B.V. All rights reserved.