Hi,

I am trying to deposit electroless nickel on a silicon substrate which
has either silicon dioxide or silicon nitride. I saw a paper in which
the authors had done the same process (B-H Kim, et al. "A MEMS-based
Silicon Probe Card"). I made a bath similar to the one discussed in the
paper. The steps are as follows:

Degreasing: Acetone
Alkali Removal of Fat: NH4OH:H2O2:H2O=1:1:6
Pickling: HCl:H2O2:H2O=1:1:5
Etching: HF:NH4F=1:6
Catalyzing: PdCl2:SnCl2.2H2O:HCl
Accelarating: 10% H2SO4
Plating: NiCl2.6H2O:C6H5O7Na3.2H2O:NH4Cl:NaH2PO2.H2O...pH=8-9

The plating seems to work well on a metallized substrate, but I am
getting no plating on the oxide or nitride.

Has anyone done this before? Any suggestions on activating the
non-conductive sample would be very helpful.


Regards,
Hiren

--
Hiren Thacker
Microelectronics Research Center, Georgia Tech
Atlanta, GA
E-Mail: hiren.thacker@ieee.org