Carbon sputter coating

Standard computer hard disk surfaces (substrates used in this experiment were industrial hard disk surfaces that have been sputter-coated with nominally 100 A of hydrogenated amorphous carbon) can be coated by dip coating with nm thin films of perfluoropolyethers, such as Fomblin ZDOL, from solutions in perfluorohexane. For films thicker than several nm dewetting occurs spontaneously over a period of days to weeks due to the autophobic effect [43]. 

Optional) Sputter-coat the samples with suitable material such as chromium, iridium, gold-palladium, or carbon. The samples are ready for examination. 

Lightly sputter coat samples with carbon. The coating thickness should be determined empirically as the minimum thickness that enables viewing without static charge artifact in the microscope. A thickness setting of 20 A was used for the image in Fig. 3B. 

TaC powder is prepared by the reaction of Ta203 with carbon at 1700 C in hydrogen usually in two steps, by the direct carburization of tantalum sponge, or by the reaction of tantalum hydride with carbon. TaC coatings are deposited by CVD, reactive evaporation and sputtering (see Chs. 14 and 15). 

Figure 10.14 Variation of the maximum blocking force and the input power with the actuator width. The actuators used were 15 mm long with 30 pm PPy thicknesses under 1 V. The electropolymerization of polypyrrole is achieved by submerging the sputter coated PVDF film in a solution ofO. 1 M pyrrole, 0.1 M LiTFSI in Propylene Carbonate (PC) with 0.5 w/w% water (Reproduced from Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2007, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 6524, Tri-layer conducting polymer actuators with variable dimensions byMinato, R., Alici, G., McGovern, S. and Spinks, G., 6524, 6524J. Copyright (2007) SPIE).

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