Hierarchical nanostructure generated by decorating SiOx nanowires with CoPt nanoparticles

Abstract

Silicon oxide nanowires were decorated with magnetically hard 3-5 nm-sized CoPt nanoparticles using a simple physical deposition system without any pretreatment of the nanowire surface. High curvature of the nanowire surface together with the weak metal-substrate interaction helped to maintain discrete particle morphology with spherical shapes during deposition. The weak interaction also allowed the preferential nucleation of the deposited film on the pre-existing particles so that the film deposition can be repeated in order to increase the particle size without significantly altering the particle morphology. We expect that this method can be easily extended to create other metal nanoparticle-decorated nanowires.