Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition of nickel nanotubes with low resistivity and coherent magnetization dynamics for 3D spintronics

Abstract

We report plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (ALD) to prepare conformal nickel thin films and nanotubes by using nickelocene as a precursor, water as the oxidant agent and an in-cycle plasma enhanced reduction step with hydrogen. The optimized ALD pulse sequence, combined with a post-processing annealing treatment, allowed us to prepare 30 nm thick metallic Ni layers with a resistivity of 8 µΩcm at room temperature and good conformality both on the planar substrates and nanotemplates. Thereby