I have tried electroplating Ni and Cu directly on a Cr seed layer with no
luck. The electroplated Ni and/or Cu have no adhesion.

For copper, I've used a seed layer of Cr for adhesion and a thin Cu layer
to be able to electroplate Cu on top of it. Both Cr seed and thin Cu
layers were deposit by sputtering. Other possibility is to use Ti as
adhesion. I'm not able to deposit Ni at the moment, but I would suggest
the same method for the Ni electroplating or you could use a Cu layer and
electroplate Ni over it. This should not be a problem.

regards

Gustavo Rehder
Universisty of São Paulo



>  Cr has a problem of developing oxide layer and its one of the main cause
> of
> poor adhesion. I encountered this problem about couple of year back when I
> was
> using Cr with Au. Oxide layer on Cr creates bad adhesion and my Au layer
> used to
> peeled off. Try to deposit both metals in one vacuum environment to avoid
> this
> problem of bad adhesion.
>
> Kind Regards
> Dr Hamood Ur Rahman,
> College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering
> National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)
> Islamabad, Pakistan