I have a water cooled copper e-beam evaporation system and I evaporate the
Nickel directly out of the copper. Using large amounts of materials avoids
cross-contamination with copper (the beam is focussed in the middle of the
resulting metal sphere). Nearly arbitrarily high rates are achievable (up to
15A/s).

I didn't try thermal evap. I'll guess there might be some alloying problems
with the boat.

* Dr. Daniel Grimm
* IFW Dresden
*            - Institute for Integrative Nanosciences -
* E-Mail:  d.grimm@ifw-dresden.de
* Phone: +49 351 4659-314
* Mobile: +49 177 4926561

-----Original Message-----
From: mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org [mailto:mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org]
On Behalf Of Jungwook Choi
Sent: Freitag, 25. September 2009 08:32
To: General MEMS discussion
Subject: [mems-talk] E-beam and thermal evaporation of 100 nm thick nickel

Dear all,

I tried to deposit 100 nm nickel film on silicon wafer by using e-beam or
thermal evaporator. In both cases, the nickel pellets were utilized as a
source.

In the case of e-beam evaporation, the deposition rate was not over 0.1~0.2
A/s. When I increased e-beam power to increase deposition rate, the graphite
crucible was broken with cracks. Is there anyone that has experience to
evaporate nickel using e-beam evaporation? Which type of nickel sources is
adequate for this?

Similarly, in the case of thermal evaporation, the tungsten boat was
suddenly broken before evaporating nickel. The holes were observed in the
broken tungsten boat. How to avoid the failure of tungsten boat? If I
replace a tungsten boat to a tungsten helix coil with nickel wires as a
source, could it be better in thermal evaporation?

Any suggestions and comments would be highly appreciated regarding above
issues.

Additionally, does adhesion layer such as Cr and Ti is needed to deposit
nickel on silicon? What is the optimum thickness of the adhesion layers?

Thanks,

J. Choi