Magnetic and electrical transport properties of electrodeposited Ni-Cu alloys and Ni81Cu19/Cu multilayers

Electrodeposited Ni-Cu alloys and nanoscale Ni-Cu/Cu multilayers were produ ced by direct-current plating and pulse-plating. respectively The room-temp erature electrical resistivity and thermopower as well as the Curie tempera ture for the Ni-Cu electrodeposits were in good agreement with relevant dat a reported for metallurgically processed Ni-Cu alloys. The same parameters were investigated also for the Ni81Cu19/Cu multilayers as a function of the constituent magnetic and non-magnetic layer thicknesses. The electrical re sistivity of the multilayers was much larger than calculated for a parallel resistance model and their thermopower was more negative than expected on the basis of a volume average model, by using bulk values of both parameter s for the sublayer materials. These differences were ascribed to surface sc attering processes which can be significant in nanoscale multilayer structu res.