A new approach to fabricating magnetic multilayer nanowires by modifying the ac pulse electrodeposition in a single bath

Abstract

This work focused on the development of a new single bath technique to fabricate compositionally modulated Co/Cu, CoFe/Cu and Fe/Cu multilayer nanowires in nanoporous alumina templates prepared by the hard and mild anodization methods. The approach was based on ac pulse electrodeposition, employing successive cycles of alternating continuous and pulsed sine waves with designated off-time between pulses and reduction/oxidation voltages. The substantial control over the composition of each segment was achieved by simultaneous change in the off-time between pulses and the ac deposition voltage. The multilayered nature of the nanostructures was substantiated by transmission electron microscopy. Each layer thickness was also nearly uniform, and could be readily adjusted by the number of pulses. The proposed method facilitates the fabrication of various multilayer nanowires in a single bath, which speeds up the fabrication process and is desirable for their application in nanodevices and nanoelectronics. The effect of magnetic layer thickness on the magnetic behaviour was also studied. Decreasing the magnetic layer thickness caused the parallel coercivity and squareness values to approach those measured in the perpendicular direction. The magnetic easy axis changed from parallel to nearly perpendicular to the nanowire axis, depending on the magnetic layers’ aspect ratio and shape anisotropies.