Fabrication and temperature dependent magnetic properties of Ni–Cu–Co composite nanowires

Ni–Cu–Co composite magnetic nanowires have been successfully synthesized by electrochemical deposition. Microstructural and compositional analyses were carried out using FESEM, TEM, HRTEM and XRD. Magnetic measurements were performed from in the temperature range 5–300 K. A strong diamagnetic contribution, which results from the polycarbonate template, was found to show s-shape behavior of the hysteresis loops of the nanowires. The coercivity of the samples was found to increase with the decreasing temperature following simple model of thermal activation of particle’s moment over the anisotropy barrier in the temperature range 50–300 K. Saturation magnetization was found to increase with decreasing temperature following the modified Bloch’s law at low temperatures.