Fabrication and magnetic properties of Sm-Co/Fe-Co and Sm-Co/Fe-Co-Dy magnetic nanowires

The Sm-Co/Fe-Co and Sm-Co/Fe-Co-Dy nanowire arrays with smaller diameter are prepared by electrochemical deposition on the anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates in this paper. The crystal structure and magnetic properties of nanowires are characterized and analyzed. It is found that the Sm-Co nanowires change from amorphous phase to nanocrystalline state with hard magnetic characterization through annealing at 660 °C for 3 h. In this experiment, rare earth element Dy is added to the Fe-Co solution, and the three alloy nanowires are prepared and researched for the first time. The addition of Dy element produces a new Fe23Dy6 phase in the nanowires. The magnetic hysteresis loops illustrate that the magnetic properties of as-deposited nanowires is improved dramatically after heat treatment and the direction parallel to the nanowire arrays is the easy direction of magnetization which leads to nanowires possessing obvious shape anisotropy. The effect of different Dy ion concentration on nanowires' magnetic properties is investigated in this paper.