Rutherford backscattering electronic materials

This paper describes a process for activating polyimide surfaces for electroless metal plating. A thin surface region of a polyimide film can be electro-chemically reduced when contacted with certain reducing agent solutions. The electroactivity of polyimides is used to mediate electron transfer for depositing catalytic metal (e.g., Pd, Pt, Ni, Cu) seeds onto the polymer surface. The proposed metal deposition mechanism presented is based on results obtained from cyclic voltammetric, UV-visible, and Rutherford backscattering analysis of reduced and metallized polyimide films. This process allows blanket and full-additive metallization of polymeric materials for electronic device fabrication. 

The large peak around the primary beam energy results from Rutherford scattering and this process increases with increasing atomic number z. therefore the number of BSE coming out of the specimen reflects the average z value of the material this is the important contrast mechanism for the backscattered electrons (see also section 3.2). 

The X ray diffraction technique is widely used in structural characterization of materials and serves as an important complement to electron microscopy, neutron diffraction, optical methods and Rutherford backscattering. 

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