Preparation of Fe-Mn nanowire alloys and the study of the effect of manganese content, annealing and electrodeposition frequency on their magnetic properties

Ordered Fe100−x Mn x (0 ≤ x ≤ 87) nanowire arrays have been prepared by co-electrodeposition of Fe and Mn into pores of homemade anodized aluminum oxide (AAO). The influence of composition, annealing temperature, and frequency on structure and magnetic properties of Fe/Mn nanowires was studied. The changes in the saturation magnetization, coercivity (Hc), remanent squareness (Mr/Ms), and crystal structure of nanowires with changing of the above parameters were also investigated. The results of XRD and SEM suggest that the nanowires have a bcc structure and that their phases change with the annealing temperature. The nanowires have uniaxial magnetic anisotropy with easy magnetization direction along the nanowire axis due to the large shape anisotropy. Also, the coercivity of the Fe100−xMn x nanowires was increased with increasing annealing temperature for all the compositions. On the other hand, the nanowire arrays electrodeposited at different electrodeposition frequencies show remarkably different magnetic behaviors, due to increasing of the electrodeposition frequency, the rate of ions for reduction was decreased.