A team at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, India, has developed films of infiltrated yttrium iron garnet that promise applications as high-density magneto-optical recording media, waveguides and modulators in integrated optical devices.

In the March 19 issue of Applied Physics Letters, the researchers describe how depositing cobaltous oxide on the films, rather than doping the bulk with cobalt ions, enhances the material's saturation magnetization and coercivity.

The scientists prepared 5000-Å-thick polycrystalline films of YIG by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition and later deposited 200 to 4600 Å of CoO on the films with the same technique. The CoO-infiltrated films displayed saturation magnetization values of up to 85.7 kA/m and out-of-plane coercivity of up to 282.7 kA/m.