A low-cost wet chemical process, viz., the electroless nickel deposition, was successfully developed to produce
magnetic nickel−tungsten−phosphorus (NiWP) mesoparticles with diameters ranging from 100 to 500 nm
on silica templates of ca. 102 nm and gold templates of ca. 3 nm. An X-ray diffractometer (XRD), transmission
electron microscope (TEM), scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray
spectrometer (EDX), a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), and a vibrating sample
magnetometer (VSM) were employed to characterize these particles. The averaged sizes of the NiWP particles
could be conveniently regulated with the duration of the electroless plating process, in which exponential
growth kinetics of the NiWP particles was observed. Both XRD and electrodiffraction (ED) patterns of these
NiWP alloys indicate existence of diffraction peaks close to the (111), (200), (220), and (311) reflections of
bulk face-centered cubic (fcc) Ni. The zero-field-cooled (ZFC) and field-cooled (FC) measurements also
indicate the irreversibility temperatures of magnetization of these particles are in between 300 and 380 K.
Dependent on the plating baths, the Curie temperatures of the resulting NiWP particles are around 330 K and
higher than 380 K. Hence, weak ferromagnetic behaviors were evidently observed on all of these NiWP
particles. Their saturation magnetization and coercivity were found in the range from 6 to 28 emu/g of sample
and from 26 to 50 Oe, respectively.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.