Microinhomogeneities in the distribution of oxygen concentration in ferrite-garnet films

Artificial microinhomogeneities were created in iron-garnet (TmBiCa)3(FeGa)5O12−γ films with various degrees of oxygen nonstoichiometry, changes in the individual magnetic characteristics of these inhomogeneities were tracked during chemical oxidation and reduction, and the interactions of these inhomogeneities with planar domain walls and spiral domains were investigated. The resulting experimental data were interpreted by analyzing how the saturation magnetization, domain-wall surface-energy density, and uniaxial anisotropy constants depended on the concentrations of different-valency iron ions, cationic vacancies, and anionic vacancies.