I believe that you are right. Depositing alloys by any method I know appears
to be problematic. For example, I looked into electroforming as a solution
with little success. However, I found a company (www.nicoform.com) that
could electroform NiCo as an alloy, which has similar characteristics to
stainless steel.

Another possible approach would be to deposit nanoparticle stainless steel
and sinter. I understand that stainless steel is available as a nanopowder.
But, I don't have any information as to how to deposit it.

Mike Barger

-----Original Message-----
From: mems-talk-admin@memsnet.org [mailto:mems-talk-admin@memsnet.org]On
Behalf Of Michael Pedersen
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 8:41 AM
To: mems-talk@memsnet.org
Subject: Re: [mems-talk] depositing stainless steel thin films


Doesn't the same thing happen with sputtering since the sputter rate of
the different species (i.e. Fe/Cr/Ni) is not the same. This is a known
problem for NiTi SMA and I would surprised if you don't have the same
problem for stainless...

Michael Pedersen

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MEMS-Exchange

e-mail: pedersen@mems-exchange.org
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BERAUER,FRANK (HP-Singapore,ex7) wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> We bought stainless steel (grade 316) sputter targets from Balzers
> & Leyboldt Singapore. I'm sure they are available from their other
> worldwide representatives as well.
> With e-beam or other evaporation methods it is very difficult to
> get consistent results for depositing alloys or compounds: Because
> of different vapour pressures, one material evaporates first and
> depletes from the target, resulting in film composition drift over
> lifetime of the target.
>


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