Morphological and magnetic characterization of electrodeposited cobalt nanowires

Abstract

In recent years much attention has been paid to the understanding of nanostructured materials (such as nanoparticles, nanowires, multilayers, etc.), which exhibit interesting new magnetic properties [1–6]. The miniaturization of the magnetic systems with nanometric scale makes it possible to obtain magnetic properties, which do not appear in the bulk material and are of great scientific and technological interest. Electrochemical techniques, which are relatively simple and cheap, make possible the synthesis of objects in the nanometric scale. Template synthesis is an elegant chemical approach to the manufacturing of nanostructured materials, in particular for different kinds of nanowires [1–10]. It may be considered as an alternative to conventional lithography methods. Arrays of cobalt nanowires have been obtained by filling a porous polycarbonate membrane, which contain a large number of cylindrical holes with a narrow size distribution. The filling is