Variations in magnetic properties of nanostructured nickel

Paramita Kar Choudhury, S. Banerjee, S. Ramaprabhu, K. P. Ramesh, Reghu Menon

Published 2010-09-20Version 1

The magnetic properties of carbon nanotube encapsulated nickel nanowires (C.E. nanowires of diameter ~ 10 nm), and its comparison to other forms of Ni are carried out in this work. The saturation magnetization (M_s) and coercivity (H_c) for C.E. nanowires are 1.0 emu/g and 230 Oe. The temperature dependence of coercivity follows T^0.77 dependence indicating a superparamagnetic behavior. The field-cooled and zero-field-cooled plots indicate that the blocking temperature (T_B) ~ 300 K. These altered magnetic properties of C.E. nanowires are mainly due to the nanoscale confinement effect from carbon nanotube encapsulation. The shape and magnetic environment enhance the total magnetic anisotropy of C.E. nanowires by a factor of four.