Thin film electroplating

Ceramic technology offers a wide choice of conductor metallizations, and various conductor technologies are used with ceramics. Screen-printed and photo-defined, thick-film, thin-film, electroplating [3], electroplating over thick film, and direct bond copper (DBC) [4] are tfie most prevalent metallizations. 

Metal Treatment. After rolling, the oxide scale on sheet steel is removed by acid treatment (pickling) (see Metal surface treatments). Phosphoric acid, a good pickling agent, leaves the steel coated with a thin film of iron phosphates. This process improves mst resistance but presents a problem if the steel is to be electroplated. 

Finishes for aluminum products can be both decorative and useful. Processes in use include anodic oxidation, chemical conversion coating, electrochemical graining, electroplating (qv), thin film deposition, porcelain enameling, and painting. Some alloys respond better than others to such treatments. 

Electroplating is the electrolytic deposition of a thin film of metal on an object. The object to be electroplated (either metal or graphite-coated plastic) constitutes the cathode, and the electrolyte is an aqueous solution of a salt of the plating metal. Metal is deposited on the cathode by reduction of ions in the electrolyte solution. These cations are supplied either by the added salt or from oxidation of the anode, which is made of the plating metal (Fig. 12.16). 

Herrero J, Ortega J (1988) n-Type ln2S3 thin films prepared by gas chalcogenization of metalhc electroplated indium Photoelectrochemical characterization. Sol Energy Mater 17 357-368... 

Figure 2. Alpha spectrum for a radium adsorbing manganese-oxide thin film exposed to a groundwater sample, after Surbeck (2000) and Eikenberg et al. (2001b). A 2x2 cm sheet is exposed to O.l-l.O L of sample for 2 days, capturing nearly all of the radium in the sample. These sample discs can be used directly for low-level alpha spectrometry without the need for further separation and preparation methods to produce planar sample sources. Energy resolution is nearly as good as for electroplated sources, and detection limits are typically 0.2 mBqA (6 fg Ra/L) for Ra and " Ra for a one-week counting period. These sensitivities are comparable to traditional methods of alpha spectrometry. [Used by permission of Elsevier Science, from Eikenberg et al. (2001), J Environ Radioact, Vol. 54, Fig. 4, p. 117]...

Electroplated CoPt [96, 97] and CoSnP [98] have also been suggested for thin-film media. Both alloys are reported to have good corrosion resistance. A plated 2.25" diameter disk uses Zn in the plating solution to control coercivity [24] details of the process are not given. 

The effects of mercury film electrode morphology in the anodic stripping SWV of electrochemically reversible and quasi-reversible processes were investigated experimentally [47-51], Mercury electroplated onto solid electrodes can take the form of either a uniform thin film or an assembly of microdroplets, which depends on the substrate [51 ]. At low sqtrare-wave frequencies the relationship between the net peak crrrrent and the frequency can be described by the theory developed for the thin-film electrode because the diffusion layers at the snrface of microdroplets are overlapped and the mass transfer can be approximated by the planar diffusion model [47,48],... 

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