Effect of magnetoelastic film thickness on power absorption in acoustically driven ferromagnetic resonance

Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) traveling on the surface of a piezoelectric substrate are capable of exciting magnetoelastic ferromagnets into resonance. In this work, we explore the effects of magnetoelastic film thickness on the coupling of SAWs into such magnetic thin films. We find that power absorption as a function of film thickness begins to saturate above thicknesses of ≈20 nm. This is contrary to current models that predict an exponential increase of the absorption as a function of increasing film thickness. We show that the saturation happens due to an increase in the damping of the film beyond this thickness range.