Metal nanostructures prepared by template electrodeposition

Template electrodeposition, by which is meant electrodeposition in natural or artificial holes in an insulating layer on a conducting substrate, offers an inexpensive route to the fabrication of patterned metal films, in some cases with structures that cannot be produced by any other method. For example, we show that it is possible to prepare nanowires of Co-Cu granular alloy by template electrodeposition in porous aluminium oxide, and that the GMR of the wires increases, as expected, on annealing. As another example, we have fabricated arrays of multilayered mu m-diameter dots using a resist layer patterned by X-ray lithography as the template - here a useful feature of electrodeposition is that it is selective, occurring only in the template holes, and not on the surface of the resist layer. Finally, we show one extension of the technique beyond magnetic materials, presenting initial results for the structure and transport properties of Pb nanowires, which are not only superconducting, but may also be grown as single-crystals, (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.