Gold-nickel-copper metallization

Many electroless deposition processes are very useful for the fabrication of various devices in the electronics industry. Significant importance for the electronics applications have metals such as silver, gold, nickel, copper, cobalt, palladium, and related alloys. All of these mentioned metals can quite simply and successfully be deposited via electroless deposition. 

Several metal oxides (platinum, gold," nickel, copper, ) and cobalt phtalo-cyanine have been employed as surface bound mediators for carbohydrate detection. In a dc amperometric mode of operation detectors based on these mediators exhibit a significant loss of response with time and/or exposure to analyte. Various potential pulse programs have circumvented this stability problem, but at the expense of sensitivity and complexity of the instrumentation. Silver electrodes coated with electrogenerated silver oxide exhibit electrocatalytic activity with respect to carbohydrate oxidation. This paper describes our efforts to utilize an electrode as a carbohydrate detector in a dc amperometric mode. 

Aqueous Electrodeposition. The theory of electro deposition is well known (see Electroplating). Of the numerous metals used in electro deposition, only 10 have been reduced to large-scale commercial practice. The most commonly plated metals are chromium, nickel, copper, zinc, rhodium, silver, cadmium, tin, and gold, followed by the less frequendy plated metals iron, cesium, platinum, and palladium, and the infrequendy plated metals indium, mthenium, and rhenium. Of these, only platinum, rhodium, iddium, and rhenium are refractory. 

The ideal electroless solution deposits metal only on an immersed article, never as a film on the sides of the tank or as a fine powder. Room temperature electroless nickel baths closely approach this ideal electroless copper plating is beginning to approach this stabiHty when carefully controUed. Any metal that can be electroplated can theoretically also be deposited by electroless plating. Only a few metals, ie, nickel, copper, gold, palladium, and silver, are used on any significant commercial scale. 

Many alloys are substitutional solid solutions, well-studied examples being copper-gold and copper-nickel. In both of these examples, the alloy has the same crystal structure as both parent phases, and the metal atoms simply substitute at random over the available metal atom sites (Fig. 4.4a). The species considered to be the defect is clearly dependent upon which atoms are in the minority. 

Alloying the nickel of the anode to improve tolerance for fuel contaminants has been explored. Gold and copper alloying decreases the catalytic activity for carbon deposition, while dispersing the anode with a heavy transition metal catalyst like tungsten improves sulfur resistance. Furthermore, ceria cermets seem to have a higher sulfur tolerance than Ni-YSZ cermets [75],... 

Several scientists in the early 1800s were aware that there were other elements mixed with platinum and other ores (i.e., nickel, copper, silver, and gold). They had difficulty separating the metals because these elements (metals) were so similar in their physical and chemical characteristics. 

Diffusion Barriers. Diffusion barriers are used in the production of various components in the electronic industry. For example, electrochemically deposited nickel is used as a barrier layer between gold and copper in electronic connectors and solder interconnections. In these applications the product is a trilayer of composition Cu/Ni/Au. In another example, Ni and Co are considered as diffusion barriers and cladding materials in the production of integrated circuits and multichip electronic packaging. In this case the barrier metal (BM), Co or Ni, is the diffusion barrier between conductor and insulator (i.e., Cu and insulator), and the product trilayer is of composition Cu/BM/insulator. The common couple in these applications is the Cu/BM bilayer (BM, the diffusion barrier metal Co, Ni, or Ni-Co alloy). 

Typically, coatings most often in use as intermediate layers are silver, nickel, copper, and gold however, silver is used by far the most often. This is so because of the low dissociation temperature of silver oxide, making it relatively easy to obtain clean surfaces. Also, the typical thickness range of electroplates used, in practice, for diffusion welding is about 15 to 40/rm, but thicknesses as great as 130 )um must sometimes be used. A considerable variety of steel types as well as aluminum and a host of other difficult-to-join metals and even beryllium have been and continue to be diffusion bonded with the use of electroplated intermediate layers. 

Keywords Metals-in-soil-gas, gold, base metals, nickel, copper, mineral exploration... 

When we determined the crystalline structure of solids in Chapter 4, we noted that most transitional metals form crystals with atoms in a close-packed hexagonal structure, face-centered cubic structure, or body-centered cubic arrangement. In the body-centered cubic structure, the spheres take up almost as much space as in the close-packed hexagonal structure. Many of the metals used to make alloys used for jewelry, such as nickel, copper, zinc, silver, gold, platinum, and lead, have face-centered cubic crystalline structures. Perhaps their similar crystalline structures promote an ease in forming alloys. In sterling silver, an atom of copper can fit nicely beside an atom of silver in the crystalline structure. 

---