Micromagnetic and structural investigations on a ferromagnetic nanocomposite system in porous silicon

Full text: Ni-nanowires, perpendicularly embedded to the surface of a Si-template are fabricated in a low-cost, only two-step electrochemical process. In the first step mesoporous silicon with highly oriented pores is produced. The electrochemical parameters for this procedure have to be chosen in a very small regime. This sKEXleton with a homogeneous spatial distribution of the pores is filled with a ferromagnetic material in a second electrochemical step. The selforganized nanowire array is characterized structurally by SEM and EDXS as well as magnetically by SQUID-magnetometry. Magnetization measurements are used to generate a model for the Ni-loading in the channels. Not only wires with diameters smaller than the Bloch-wall thickness and a length between 10 μm and 30 μm are present but also particles in the size up to 200 nm are existent. This nanocomposite system shows a peculiar two-fold magnetic switching characteristic. The first switching is in the low field regime (∼ 500 Oe) and the second one at high fields of a few Tesla. The magnetization reversal is treated in terms of an analytic formulation. The second switching field which occurs as breakdown of the magnetization can be influenced by temperature control and different loading conditions. This promising nanocomposite system is not only interesting in basic research but gives rise to a lot of silicon based applications liKEX magnetic field sensors. Due to rather long spin-relaxation in silicon the needles could be used for spin-injection into c-silicon and therefore it is also an interesting system for spintronics. (author)