Oriented arrays of iron nanowires: synthesis, structural and magnetic aspects

Iron nanowires with the diameter of ca. 40 nm and a length up to few dozens of microns are fabricated via templated electrodeposition using anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) film as porous matrix. Despite polycrystalline structure of wires the technique allows fabrication of dense deposits with micrometer-sized single crystalline grains within AAO templates and high chemical stability towards oxidation. Nanowire arrays exhibit strong magnetization anisotropy with saturation magnetization of 180 emu/g and coercive field of 815 Oe in direction parallel to the long axis of nanowires and 230 Oe in perpendicular direction. The effective hyperfine fields on iron atoms as extracted from Mossbauer and Nuclear Forward Scattering of sample in demagnetized state indicates slight deviation of magnetization vector (~ 6°) from nanowire long axis appearing probably due to curling of magnetic moments by antisymmetric exchange interactions at the surface of nanowires.