(a) Minor

hysteresis loop of the Co nanowires/InP membrane composite obtained by VSM measurement at α = 0° (H || z) and (b) at α = 90° (H ⊥ z). For α = 0°, the hysteresis losses of the 0.5 and 1 kOe minor loops are significantly higher compared to the corresponding minor loops for α = 90°. The same behavior is found for the maximum normalized magnetization. This behavior suggests that the easy magnetization direction of the Co nanowires lies along the long nanowire axis z (α = 0°) due to the high aspect ratio of the Co nanowires giving rise to a pronounced shape anisotropy that exceeds the magnetocrystalline anisotropy of selleckchem Co [23]. The remanence squareness of 0.07 found for the easy magnetization direction is very low compared to a single

nanowire with the magnetization also along selleck products the long nanowire axis z [24]. One could understand this behavior by taking into account the nucleation of domains with inverse magnetization at the bottom or at the top of the Co nanowires. These domains with inverse magnetization could efficiently reduce stray fields and might be also the reason for the reduced the remanence squareness. The magnetostatic interactions between AZD8931 clinical trial neighboring Co nanowires might also play an important role, since the interwire distance is far smaller compared to the diameter of the Co nanowires. Another interesting effect is that for external magnetic fields H a larger than 500 Oe, the minor loops show a distinct hysteresis that disappears completely for very small H a (20 and 100 Oe). These minor loops show a reversible linear magnetic field dependence with a higher slope observed for α = 0°. The reversible linear magnetic field dependence means that the magnetization reversal at very small fields H a occurs by domain rotation Bay 11-7085 and reversible domain wall motion and not by irreversible domain wall motion as observed for higher external fields. The angular dependence of the coercivity

is presented in Figure 4b. The coercivity shows a completely different angular behavior. It is smallest for α = 0° (around 150 Oe) and increases constantly to about 210 Oe for α = 60°, where it peaks for α = 60° and α = 75° before it slightly decreases to around 205 Oe for α = 90°. The magnified view on the differential normalized susceptibility χ norm around H = 0 Oe – depicted in Figure 4c – shows an inverse angular behavior with respect to the maximum χ norm. With increasing angle α, the maximum χ norm decreases steadily from about 0.43/kOe for α = 0° reaching a plateau at about 0.3/kOe for α = 75° and α = 90°. In addition to that, two characteristic peak positions are observed represented by the two solid lines at around 160 Oe and by the two dashed lines at around 280 Oe.