Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition of nickel nanotubes with low resistivity and coherent magnetization dynamics for 3D spintronics

We report plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (ALD) to prepare conformal nickel thin films and nanotubes by using nickelocene as a precursor, water as the oxidant agent and an in-cycle 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 μΩcm at room temperature and good conformality both on the planar substrates and nanotemplates. Thereby we fabricated several micrometer-long nickel nanotubes with diameters ranging from 120 to 330 nm. We report on the correlation between ALD growth and functional properties of individual Ni nanotubes characterized in terms of magneto-transport 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 a 3D device architecture.