Room-temperature magnetic properties of SiC based nanowires synthesized via microwave heating method

• Two kinds of SiC based nanowires are synthesized via a simple and low-cost method.
• The micro-structures of the nanowires are characterized by various methods.
• The SiC/SiOx coaxial nanowires exhibit ferromagnetism without metal impurity.
• The ferromagnetism of coaxial nanowires may be attributed to the charge transfer.
• The Ms of the nanowires can be four-fold enhanced by introducing Ni-related phases.

Two kinds of ferromagnetic SiC based nanowires with and without Ni catalyst were successfully synthesized by employing microwave heating method. The comprehensive characterizations and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) have been applied to investigate the micro-structures and magnetic properties of as-grown nanowires. For the nanowires synthesized without using Ni catalyst, the diameters and lengths are in the range of 20–60 nm and dozens of micrometers, respectively. Particularly, the results of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) show that the nanowires consist of SiC core and SiOx shell. The SiC/SiOx coaxial nanowires exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism with saturation magnetization (Ms) of 0.2 emu/g. As to the nanowires obtained using Ni catalyst, the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results indicate that the Ni catalyzed nanowires have a nano-particle attached on the tip and a uniform diameter of approximately 50 nm. The vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth mechanism can be used to explain the formation of the Ni catalyzed nanowires. The detection result of VSM indicates that the Ni catalyzed nanowires possess the paramagnetism and the ferromagnetism, simultaneously. The enhancement of the ferromagnetism, compared with the SiC/SiOx coaxial nanowires, could be attributed to the Ni2Si and NiSi phases.