Twofold and fourfold anisotropies in zinc ferrite thin films investigated by ferromagnetic resonance

By means of the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) technique (at the X band) we investigated the magnetic properties of ZnFe2O4 (ZFO) films grown on different substrates. Angular dependence of the FMR field showed the existence of twofold and fourfold anisotropies for the same material, grown on Si(111), MgO(100), and STO(100), respectively. By using a model that takes into consideration the relevant contributions to the energy, we were able to extract the following parameters: effective magnetization M-eff, cubic magnetocrystalline anisotropy field, in-plane and out of plane uniaxial anisotropy fields, and the g factor. The samples deposited on Si showed a twofold in-plane anisotropy while a fourfold magnetic anisotropy was observed for the ZFO/MgO and ZFO/SrTiO3 samples. All samples showed a strong perpendicular uniaxial anisotropy above 1 kOe and low in-plane uniaxial and cubic anisotropy field, on the order of tens of oersteds. The FMR linewidth (Delta H) fitted from FMR data shows Delta H values above 190 Oe for all samples, indicating high damping of this material to be similar to 10(-2) for the ZFO/MgO. The present analysis compared the FMR data obtained for the in-plane and out of plane measurements. Likewise, the effective magnetization and perpendicular uniaxial anisotropy field by FMR were compared with the magnetic response obtained by a vibrating sample magnetometer.