Magnetic and morphological properties of CoCu nanowires

Abstract

Heterogeneous CoCu nanowires containing different amounts of Co (up to 50% at. wt of Co) are made by electro-deposition (ED) method. CoCu nanowires were grown in AAO templates by varying the current density. The diameter of CoCu nanowires was around 40 nm. Therefore, the growing of CoCu nanowires was compacted with the diameter of AAO templates. The XRD patterns showed that all the CoCu nanowires fabricated via electro-deposition were polycrystalline. At low current density (1.32 mA/cm2), the intensity of Cu (111) peak was very strong. Increasing the current density can be led to increase the intensity of Co (100) peak. High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) images of the highest Co content (50%at.) wires showed the existence of layers of polycrystalline heterogeneous CoCu alternating with layers of Cu. The magnetic properties showed that the highest coercivity (7.235 kOe) and squareness (0.754) were found in the unannealed nanowires having the highest Co content Copyright © 2014 American Scientific Publishers.