Nanolithography based contacting method for electrical measurements on single template synthesized nanowires

A reliable method enabling electrical measurements on single nanowires prepared by electrodeposition in an alumina template is described. This technique is based on electrically controlled nanoindentation of a thin insulating resist deposited on the top face of the template filled by the nanowires. We show that this method is very flexible, allowing us to electrically address single nanowires of controlled length down to 100 nm and of desired composition. Using this approach, current densities as large as 10(9) A cm(-2) were successfully injected through a point contact on a single magnetic multilayered nanowire. This demonstrates that the technique is very promising for the exploration of electrical spin injection in magnetic nanostructures.