Fabrication and Characterization of Iron-Cobalt Alloy Magnetic Nanocluster Wires by Thermal Decomposition Method in Magnetic Fields

We present one-step synthetic method of magnetic alloy nanocluster wires. This process is simple, less expensive, and saves time. The gas is vaporized in a vacuum chamber from a solution of dicobalt octacarbonyl (Co ₂(CO)₈) and iron pentacarbonyl (Fe(CO)₅) mixture, and thermally decomposed by using a nichrome wire. The silicon substrate is placed in a homogeneous magnetic field which is produced by two permanent magnets (4000 gauss), so that the nanowires easily grow in the direction of the magnetic flux. From X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM), we confirmed that these have a body-centered-cubic (BCC) structure with the magnetization easy axis of [110] direction, and a diameter in the range of 4 to 6 nm with a few micrometers in length. Also, we investigated that the squareness of the hysteresis loop is 61% for magnetic fields parallel to the wires and the coercivity along the easy axis is 670 oersteds by using vibrating scanning magnetometer (VSM).