Herein, we explore a novel nanopattern-based growth approach to enhance the material quality of the earth-abundant photovoltaic absorber zinc phosphide.
We report plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (ALD) to prepare conformal nickel thin films and nanotubes using nickelocene as a precursor, water as the oxidant agent, and an incycle plasma-enhanced reduction step with hydrogen. The optimized ALD pulse sequence, combined with a post-processing annealing treatment, allowed us to prepare 30 nm-thick metallic Ni layers with a resistivity of 8 μΩ cm at room temperature and good conformality both on the planar substrates and nanotemplates. Thus, we fabricated several micrometers-long nickel nanotubes with diameters ranging from 120 to 330 nm. We report the correlation between ALD growth and functional properties of individual Ni nanotubes characterized in terms of magnetotransport and the confinement of spin-wave modes. The findings offer novel perspectives for Ni-based spintronics and magnonic devices operated in the GHz frequency regime with 3D device architectures.
Semiconductors made of earth-abundant elements, such as zinc phosphide, have the potential to substitute less abundant, highly functional compound semiconductors such as InAs or InP.
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