Plasma-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition of Nickel Nanotubes with Low Resistivity and Coherent Magnetization Dynamics for 3D Spintronics

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 12; no. 36; pp. 40443 - 40452
• Main Authors: Giordano, M. C, Baumgaertl, K, Escobar Steinvall, S, Gay, J, Vuichard, M, Fontcuberta i Morral, A, Grundler, D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 09-09-2020
• Subjects: Functional Inorganic Materials and Devices; magnetoresistance; nickel; atomic layer deposition; magnonics; Brillouin light scattering microscopy; spin wave; ferromagnet; nanotube
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c06879

We report plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (ALD) to prepare conformal nickel thin films and nanotubes using nickelocene as a precursor, water as the oxidant agent, and an in-cycle plasma-enhanced reduction step with hydrogen. The optimized ALD pulse sequence, combined with a post-processing annealing treatment, allowed us to prepare 30 nm-thick metallic Ni layers with a resistivity of 8 μΩ cm at room temperature and good conformality both on the planar substrates and nanotemplates. Thus, we fabricated several micrometers-long nickel nanotubes with diameters ranging from 120 to 330 nm. We report the correlation between ALD growth and functional properties of individual Ni nanotubes characterized in terms of magnetotransport and the confinement of spin-wave modes. The findings offer novel perspectives for Ni-based spintronics and magnonic devices operated in the GHz frequency regime with 3D device architectures.