Producing High-Ratio Nanowires by Pressure-Induced Infiltration into Anodized Aluminum Oxide Nanoporous Template

This work aims to optimize the uniformity and filling factor of intermetallic nanowire arrays produced by the metallic flux nanonucleation into anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) templates. This technique allows the growth of a wide range of compositions, yielding a unique tool to achieve promising functional magnetic nanowires of high-quality. Since macroscopic magnetization characterization usually requires high magnetic signal and nanowire alignment, maximizing the template filling factor is crucial. We present a setup with objective of previously infiltrating the flux element into the nanopores, before performing the metallic flux protocol. It is based on an external applied pressure, under vacuum and heated conditions. We achieved throughout infiltration of Ga, a common flux element, in more than 71 % of the nanopores (200 nm diameter and
$80 \mu \mathrm{m}$
l long) of an AAO template.