Growth and study of 3d Ni nanoparticles films deposited on inert substrates

The interest in metal nanostructured films has grown in the last years because of their fascinating physical properties and their potentiality in various applications, like magnetic recording industry and tribology. As an example, smaller particles are required in order to realize advanced magnetic memory units. This request constitutes an important challenge, because of the super-paramagnetic limit for the density of recorded bits, which makes conventional recording media with three-dimensional particles unstable [1]. We performed a study of 3d (Cu, Ni and Fe) metal nanoparticles films grown on oxidized Si and MgO inert substrates. The deposition has been obtained by making use of a recently developed experimental system, with a gas aggregation cluster source, a quadrupole mass filter and a deposition chamber [2,3]. The source can produce high flux of particles with variable size distribution in a range from 1 to 10 nm. We produced films of Cu, Ni and Fe particles of different size (from 3 to 5 nm average diameter) and thickness values, from 1 to 10 nm corresponding to regimes where the nanoparticles are sparse or they constitute a nanostructured film. The samples have been characterized ex-situ with scanning electron microscopy, atom force microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy and electron spectroscopy techniques to check morphology and composition. Magneto Optical Kerr Effect (MOKE) experiments have been performed on Ni grown on MgO(100) to investigate the role played by the magnetic dipole interaction between the particles. Results have shown that samples are paramagnetic at Room Temperature. We also performed a low temperature MOKE experiment on a 7 nm thick film of Ni nanoparticles with 5 nm average diameter grown on MgO(100), and we obtained a ferromagnetic hysteresis at T=100 K, revealing magnetic blocking at this temperature. [1] see, for instance S. D. Bader, Rev. of Mod. Phys. 78 (2006) 1 and ref.s therein. [2] C. Binns, SUrf. Sci. Rep. 44 (2001) 1. [3] C. Binns et al., J. Phys. D: Appl Phys. 38 (2005) R357.