Preparation and physical properties of soft magnetic nickel-cobalt nanowires with modulated diameters
We establish a method to produce cylindrical magnetic nanowires displaying several segments, with a large versatility in terms of segment diameter and length. It is based on electroplating in alumina templates, the latter being prepared by several steps of anodization, wet etching and atomic layer deposition to produce, widen or shrink pores, respectively. We propose an analytical model to analyze the in-plane and out-of-plane magnetization loops of dense assemblies of multisegmented wires. The model considers inter-wires dipolar fields, end-domain curling and predicts the switching field of individual wires with no adjustable parameter. Its ingredients are crucial to extract reliable parameters from the fitting of loops, such as magnetization or the porosity of the array.