Growth and Magnetic Characterization of 1D Permalloy Nanowires Using Self Developed Anodic Aluminium Oxide Templates

1D Permalloy refers to arrays of nanowires (NWs) made of an alloy of Ni and Fe with 80 and 20 at% composition respectively. In the present work 1 D Permalloy NWs arrays were fabricated into the pores of self engineered Anodic Aluminium Oxide (AAO) templates by a simple electrodeposition technique (EDT). By varying the anodization voltage and parameters of the electrolyte solutions we developed AAO templates with different average pore diameters (40 nm to 70 nm) and developed 1D Permalloy NWs within them. Structural characterization of AAO templates and 1D Permalloy NWs were performed by Transmission and Scanning Electron Microscopy (TEM and SEM respectively). X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies of 1D Permalloy NWs showed their fcc crystalline structure and the AAO template was found to be amorphous in nature. Magnetic studies showed the 1D Permalloy NWs arrays to have strong shape anisotropy, and the easy axis was found to be parallel to the NWs axis. We studied the angular dependence of magnetic properties of the NWs. Coercivity (Hc) and remanence (Mr/Ms) measured along the NWs axis were found to be higher than those measured in a direction perpendicular to the NWs axis. 1D Permalloy NWs developed in this work have the potential to be used in magnetic recording devices.