[labnetwork] Electroplating Ni

[Quinn Leonard]

We had good results using the premixed Ni electroplating bath available from Sigma-Aldrich. Our application required plating Ni films on the order of a few microns thick, with low stress, to form features with sizes down to one micron width or so. We saw Ni crystal grain sizes around 25 nm in the plated film. This may, or may not, scale up to the 25 micron thickness you ask for.

Some work was done at the same time with another commercial product that was sold as separate components - wetting agent, stabilizer, brightener, a couple of chemicals to manage pH, something to reduce stress in the final film, and finally the solution of goofy sulfated nickel compound that provides the actual metal. Probably this could have given us more control over the process, but tinkering with all those components by a lone graduate student, who did Ni plating only occasionally never yielded a stable process. And it cost a lot.

We also found it necessary to build a recirculation/filtration/temperature control system for the plating bath to live in; otherwise the results were nonuniform across our 4" samples, could have different plating rates for different sized features, and were otherwise nonreproducible.

A good place to start reading might be the ASM Metals Handbook Volume 5: Surface Engineering.

Best of luck!

Quinn Leonard
Technical Staff
Nanoscale Fabrication Center
University of Wisconsin

Room 3112 Engineering Centers Building
1550 Engineering Drive
Madison, WI 53706

(608) 890-3030
qleonard at wisc.edu<mailto:qleonard at wisc.edu>
https://wcnt.wisc.edu/

On 3/12/2019 2:24 PM, Milan Begliarbekov wrote:
Hi All,

I need to electroplate Nickel into a photoresist mask. The features should be 25 microns wide and 25 microns tall. Does anyone have a suggestion about external vendors that would be good for this? Also any other guidance about this process is highly appreciated.

Thank you for the help,

Milan Begliarbekov
Research<https://twitter.com/asrcnanofab?lang=en> Assistant Professor
NanoFabrication<https://twitter.com/asrcnanofab?lang=en> Facility<http://nanofab.asrc.cuny.edu/>
CUNY Advanced Science Research Center
Office: 212-413-3311
85 St. Nicholas Terrace
Manhattan NY 10031




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--
Quinn Leonard
Technical Staff
Nanoscale Fabrication Center
University of Wisconsin

Room 3112 Engineering Centers Building
1550 Engineering Drive
Madison, WI 53706

(608) 890-3030
qleonard at wisc.edu<mailto:qleonard at wisc.edu>
https://wcnt.wisc.edu/
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