It sounds like your silver source got too hot too fast.  The "nucleus of silver"
you describe are probably silver spheres caused by the material boiling and
ejecting droplets into the chamber.

I recommend you try to ramp the temperature of the silver very slowly while you
watch it.  If at any time you notice the surface of the melt start to shake and
quiver, back off on the power until it settles down again.  Once things are
calm, you can start ramping the power again.

The film you are depositing is relatively thin and should not be too difficult
if you are careful.  We were able to deposit uniform films up to 7microns thick
at very high rates.

Let me know if you  have further questions.

Dan

________________________________

From: mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org on behalf of Meir Grajower
Sent: Sun 2/14/10 6:00 AM
To: mems-talk@memsnet.org
Subject: [mems-talk] Thin layer silver (~30nm) deposition



Hi All,

I want to deposit a thin layer (~30nm) of silver on glass. So, I cleaned the
glass and evaporate (EBPVD) silver on it, the chamber temperature was 21C.
The results were not good - the layer was not uniform and had a lot of
big nucleus of silver.

Is it possible to make\deposit a uniform layer of silver (or gold) of ~30nm?
if so, how should i do it?

Please help :)