Yttrium Iron Garnet: Properties and Applications Review

Due to a fast progress in the development of communication systems, the dielectric and magnetic ceramics (ferrites) have become attractive to be used in devices. Although the ferrites of the spinel type were the first material to be used in the microwave range, garnets have smaller dielectric losses and, therefore, are chosen for many applications. High demands for modern electric applications in magnetic materials results in new techniques and products being permanently studied and researched, with a consequent appearance of new solutions for a wide applications series. This work presents the study of the ferrimagnetic composite, constituted by Y₃Fe₅O₁₂ (YIG) and Gd₃Fe₅O₁₂ (GdIG) phases, through solid state synthetic route and submitted to high-energy mechanical milling. Additionally, experiments were made in order to evaluate the electric and magnetic behavior of the composites at radio frequency and microwave range and then later suggest an adequate technological application. The composites were efficient as ferrite resonator antennas (FRAs) and microstrip antennas (thick films deposited on metalized surface alumina substrate by screen-printing technique), in the microwave frequency range. The experiments with FRAs showed satisfactory results due to the control of the antennas radiation characteristics and their tuning by the use of an external magnetic field. The composite resonators studied in this work can be important to the development of a third generation (3G) wideband antennas to cell phones and other wireless products.