A new technique is required which enables tailoring of the morphology of a metallic nanostructured material down to the 10 nm length scale. Using nanoporous nuclear track etched membranes as templates for electrodeposition, an assembly of wires with diameters as low as 30 nm could be obtained. Alternating the electrodeposition of two metals resulted in multilayers grown perpendicular to the wire axis. Layer thicknesses as low as 2 nm could be reached. Application is demonstrated by making wires 6 μm long, 80 nm in diameter, having a succession of either Co and Cu layers or of (Ni,Fe) and Cu layers. Wires containing layers of 5–10 nm in thickness exhibited a giant magnetoresistance. The current was naturally perpendicular to the layers. At ambient temperature, a magnetoresistance of 14% for Co/Cu and of 10% for (Fe,Ni)/Cu was observed.
Assemblies of ferromagnetic cylinders made of Ni with diameters ranging from 35 to 250 nm were produced by electrodeposition in nanoporous membranes. The large coercive fields of Ni nanowires at low temperature could be accounted for by the curling mode of magnetization reversal, taking into account the distributions of wire diameters and orientations. The coercive field of the nanowires of the smaller diameter range decreased from 1500 Oe at 20 K to 200 Oe at 300 K nearly linearly.
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