Magnetization Reversal Process and Magnetostatic Interactions in Fe56Co44/SiO2/Fe3O4 Core/Shell Ferromagnetic Nanowires with Non-Magnetic Interlayer

Abstract

Nowadays, numerous works regarding nanowires or nanotubes are being published, studying different combinations of materials or geometries with single or multiple layers. However, works, where both nanotube and nanowires are forming complex structures, are scarcer due to the underlying difficulties that their fabrication and characterization entail. Among the specific applications for these nanostructures that can be used in sensing or high-density magnetic data storage devices, there are the fields of photonics or spintronics. To achieve further improvements in these research fields, a complete understanding of the magnetic properties exhibited by these nanostructures is needed, including their magnetization reversal processes and control of the magnetic domain walls. In order to gain a deeper insight into this topic, complex systems are being fabricated by altering their dimensions or composition. In this work, a successful process flow for the additive fabrication of core/shell nanowires arrays is developed. The core/shell nanostructures fabricated here consist of a magnetic nanowire nucleus (Fe56Co44), grown by electrodeposition and coated by a non-magnetic SiO2 layer coaxially surrounded by a magnetic Fe3O4 nanotubular coating both fabricated by means of the Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technique. Moreover, the magnetization reversal processes of these coaxial nanostructures and the magnetostatic interactions between the two magnetic components are investigated by means of standard magnetometry and First Order Reversal Curve methodology. From this study, a two-step magnetization reversal of the core/shell bimagnetic nanostructure is inferred, which is also corroborated by the hysteresis loops of individual core/shell nanostructures measured by Kerr effect-based magnetometer.