Characterization of Electrodeposited NiCo Films with Incorporated Ferrite (BaFe₁₂O₁₉) Nano-Particles

NiCo films with incorporated ferrite (BaFe 12 O 19 ) nano-particles were studied with the motivation of future MEMS application. The microstructure was characterized by SEM, TEM, EBSD and XRD. Magnetic properties were derived from SQUID magnetometry. Two types of layers were electrodeposited distinguished by their microstructure. One type is a pure NiCo nano-grained matrix without particle incorporation; the other is a composite of the nano-grained NiCo matrix with co-deposited nano-sized ferrite particles with a content of about 0.2 wt. %. The soft magnetic matrix dominates the global magnetization behavior expected for NiCo alloys. Despite the low incorpotation rate, the influence of the BaFe 12 O 19 particles in the matrix is apparent in the in-plane measurement.