Engineered Fe-Based Nanocolumnar Films

Nowadays, there is great interest in obtaining nanostructured thin films in large areas using methods that can be scaled up for mass production. Nanocolumnar films fabricated by glancing angle deposition with magnetron sputtering (MS-GLAD) are a very promising approach for this purpose. In this work, the morphology, crystalline structure and magnetic properties of iron nanocolumnar films obtained by MS-GLAD are studied. It is also shown how these features are modified when the nanocolumnar films are subjected to thermal treatments transforming the iron into some of its different oxides. An additional coating is also studied, which consists of the deposition of platinum (Pt) nanoparticles, generated by a multiple ion cluster source, on top of the iron nanocolumns. The morphology and the wettability properties of that heterogeneous system are reported.