Fabrication and characterization of Co1-xFex alloy nanowires

Co1-xFex alloy nanowires with 40 nm diam and x=0-1.0 were fabricated by electrodeposition in nanopores of alumina templates. The crystalline structure of the nanowires is concentration dependent and shows a transition from the cobalt hexagonal-closed-packed structure (hcp) to a face-centered-cubic structure (fcc) in the concentration range 0<0.1. For an iron content greater than 15 at % the structure becomes body-centered-cubic (bcc). The nanowires with an aspect ratio of about 8 show a highly anisotropic magnetization with the easy axis along the length of the wire. The squareness of the hysteresis loops is between 72% and 93% for magnetic fields parallel to the wires while the squareness is less than 13% for fields perpendicular to the wires. The coercivity along the easy axis reaches a maximum of 2150 Oe for x=0.55 and is almost concentration independent for 0.5<0.6. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.