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Magnetic heterostructures consisting of single‐crystal yttrium iron garnet (YIG) films coated with platinum are widely used in spin‐wave experiments related to spintronic phenomena such as the spin‐transfer‐torque, spin‐Hall, and spin‐Seebeck effects. However, spin waves in YIG/Pt bilayers experience much stronger attenuation than in bare YIG films. For micrometer‐thick YIG films, this effect is caused by microwave eddy currents in the Pt layer. This paper reports that by employing an excitation configuration in which the YIG film faces the metal plate of the microstrip antenna structure, the eddy currents in Pt are shunted and the transmission of the Damon–Eschbach surface spin wave is greatly improved. The reduction in spin‐wave attenuation persists even when the Pt coating is separated from the ground plate by a thin dielectric layer. This makes the proposed excitation configuration suitable for injection of an electric current into the Pt layer and thus for application in spintronics devices. The theoretical analysis carried out within the framework of the electrodynamic approach reveals how the platinum nanolayer and the nearby highly conductive metal plate affect the group velocity and the lifetime of the Damon–Eshbach surface wave and how these two wavelength‐dependent quantities determine the transmission characteristics of the spin‐wave device.

Magnetoelastic coupling is considered as one of the most reliable method to induce nonreciprocity of propagation losses of microwave‐frequency surface acoustic waves (SAW) and other acoustic modes propagating in nonmagnetic‐ferromagnetic heterostructures. Here, it is demonstrated theoretically that magnetoelastic coupling can also induce phase nonreciprocity of SAW, which is necessary for the development of SAW circulators and other nonreciprocal solid‐state‐acoustic devices. In contrast to previous studies, induction of the phase nonreciprocity requires the coupling of SAW to a strongly nonreciprocal spin wave (SW), having the nonreciprocal splitting of the SW spectrum much larger than the strength of the magnetoelastic coupling, which, in turn, should be much larger than the geometric mean of the SW and SAW damping rates. In this case, the hybridized SAW in the spectral region between the magnetoelastic gaps demonstrate significant phase nonreciprocity, retaining, at the same time, propagation losses that are close to those of unhybridized SAW. Possible practical realization of nonreciprocal SAW phase shifters and SAW‐ring‐based circulators based on hybridized waves in acoustic crystal and synthetic antiferromagnetic heterostructures is discussed.