Porous Silicon Nanocomposites with Combined Hard and Soft Magnetic Properties

Magnetic nanostructures of two ferromagnetic metals have been combined within porous silicon, and the magnetic switching behavior of the resulting porous silicon/metal nanocomposite has been modified by varying the arrangement. The two magnetic materials are Ni and Co, whereas Co is the magnetic harder one. These “hard/soft” magnetic nanocomposites have been achieved by two different routes. On the one hand, double-sided porous silicon has been used whereas one side has been filled with Ni nanostructures and the other one with Co nanostructures. On the other hand, Ni and Co have been deposited within one porous layer alternatingly. The filling of the pores has been carried out by electrodeposition with varying the deposition parameters. In systems which offer two distinct slopes of the hysteresis curves due to the different saturation behavior of the two types of deposited metal, magnetic exchange coupling is not present. For samples which show smooth hysteresis curves exchange, coupling between the Ni and Co nanostructures seems to be present. The aim is to control especially the structure size of the soft and the hard magnetic materials and the distance between them at the nanoscale to optimize exchange coupling resulting in a maximum energy product.