Preserved Magnetic Functionality in Freestanding Strain-Engineered Nanocomposite Thin Films

The development of freestanding oxide thin films enables the design of unconventional heterostructures with enhanced functionalities. Here, we explore the fabrication of membranes consisting of dense arrays of ultrathin CoxNi1–x nanowires embedded in a dielectric matrix. We present a lift-off process to create and transfer these membranes while preserving the structural and chemical integrity of the nanopillars. The large axial deformation of the metallic nanostructures is maintained, and their magnetic properties remain largely unaltered after substrate removal. This robustness enables the integration of such strain-engineered, vertically aligned nanocomposites into flexible spintronic and magnetic memory platforms.