Magnetic Damping in Epitaxial Fe Alloyed with Vanadium and Aluminum

• Main Authors: Smith, David A, Rai, Anish, Lim, Youngmin, Hartnett, Timothy, Sapkota, Arjun, Srivastava, Abhishek, Mewes, Claudia, Jiang, Zijian, Clavel, Michael, Hudait, Mantu K, Viehland, Dwight D, Heremans, Jean J, Balachandran, Prasanna V, Mewes, Tim, Emori, Satoru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 21-07-2020
• Subjects: Physics - Materials Science
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2004.04840

Phys. Rev. Applied 14, 034042 (2020) To develop low-moment, low-damping metallic ferromagnets for power-efficient
spintronic devices, it is crucial to understand how magnetic relaxation is
impacted by the addition of nonmagnetic elements. Here, we compare magnetic
relaxation in epitaxial Fe films alloyed with light nonmagnetic elements of V
and Al. FeV alloys exhibit lower intrinsic damping compared to pure Fe, reduced
by nearly a factor of 2, whereas damping in FeAl alloys increases with Al
content. Our experimental and computational results indicate that reducing the
density of states at the Fermi level, rather than the average atomic number,
has a more significant impact in lowering damping in Fe alloyed with light
elements. Moreover, FeV is confirmed to exhibit an intrinsic Gilbert damping
parameter of $\simeq$0.001, among the lowest ever reported for ferromagnetic
metals.