Fabrication of Oriented Fe Nanocrystals

Abstract

Granular thin films of oriented α-Fe nanoparticles were prepared by taking advantage of the epitaxial growth of α-Fe on <100> oriented Au "seed" nanoparticles, which were epitaxially grown on a (100) NaCl substrate. The crystallographic orientation between α-Fe and Au nanocrystals is <100>Au//<100>Fe with {010}Au//{011 }Fe. It is shown that this method can be applied to control the size and inter-particle distance of oriented Fe nanocrystals in granular films. Effects of the α-Fe particle size and inter-particle distance on the coercivity of the films have been studied.