Things don't like to stick to gold.  This would inherently lead to
preferrential growth at the initiation sites.  Perhaps coat the Au with Ti.
or Cr.

On Jan 24, 2008 9:42 AM, Javier Sesé  wrote:

>  We are fabricating a microcoil using two metal layers and PECVD oxide
> for electrical insulation. The metal layers are gold deposited using
> e-beam evaporation with a few nm of Cromium for adhesion. We found that
> the PECVD oxide that grows on top of gold is VERY ROUGH (tipically a
> roughness of 50nm for a 200nm thick layer). Further it is plenty of
> pinholes. Does anyone know the reason?
>
> We use N2O and 5%SiH4 95%He as precursor gases, deposition temperature
> is T=300ºC
>

--
Regards,
dbp