Electrodeposition and magnetic properties of ternary Fe-Co-Ni alloy nanowire arrays with high squareness ratio

Highly-ordered ternary Fe-Co-Ni alloy nanowire arrays with diameters of about 50 nm have been fabricated by alternating current (AC) electrodeposition into the nanochannels of porous anodic aluminum oxide templates. SEM and TEM results indicate that the alloy nanowires are highly ordered. XRD and HRTEM results show that the ternary FeCoNi alloy nanowires are polycrystalline, with HCP-FCC dual phase structure. Magnetic measurements demonstrate that the ternary alloy nanowire arrays have an obvious magnetic anisotropy with an easy magnetization direction being parallel to the nanowire arrays. Along the easy magnetization direction, the coercivity (Hc) and squareness ratio (S) increase as the annealing temperature increases, and reach a maximum level (Hc = 1337 Oe, S = 0.96) at 300 °C.