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In the present work, the growth kinetics of nickel nanorods inside commercially available Whatman nanoporous membrane is explored to achieve uniform deposition over a large area of the membrane. Uniform electrodeposition inside nanopores requires continuous presence of solute ions near the deposition site and reduction of ions. To control ion diffusion and reduction near the deposition site, the effect of DC potential and pulsed potential with various duty cycles and solution temperatures is analyzed. Time-dependent variation in deposition current is recorded for all experiments. For different experimental conditions, high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image is acquired. SEM along with the current density profile helped to understand the deposition mechanism for various growth conditions. Experiments confirmed that pulse deposition with a small duty cycle is promising to achieve uniform deposition. Also, by changing the pulse duty cycle, a sectioned nanostructure can be obtained. Based on the electron microscopic observation for various deposition conditions used in this work, it is concluded that initially nickel ions adhere to the pore surfaces due to high surface energy. When a potential is applied, ions reduce and a hollow nanotube structure forms. With time, concentric growth continues by forming a solid nanorod structure.

Atomic force microscopy based force-displacement spectroscopy is used to quantify magnetic interaction force between sample and magnetic cantilever. AFM based F-D spectroscopy is used widely to understand various surface-surface interaction at small scale. Here we have studied the interaction between a magnetic nanocomposite and AFM cantilevers. Two different AFM cantilever with same stiffness but with and without magnetic coating is used to obtain F-D spectra in AFM. The composite used has magnetic Ni nanophase distributed uniformly in an Alumina matrix. Retrace curves obtained using both the cantilevers on magnetic composite and sapphire substrate are compared. It is found for magnetic sample cantilever comes out of contact after traveling 100 nm distance from the actual point of contact. We have also used MFM imaging at various lift height and found that beyond 100nm lift height magnetic contrast is lost for our composite sample, which further confirms our F-D observation.