Hello,
I am trying to deposit titanium and aluminium on to patterned PDMS electrodes for my project. I tried to deposit Ti using DC sputtering and deposit Al using thermal evaporator. However, for Ti case, my thin film cracked (mostly microcracks as seen in the image below) and these cracks decrease conductivity too much. I deposited Ti approximately 400 nm thick on to PDMS.
And for Al's case, I deposited Al with 115 nm thickness, but we did not read any electrical conductivity value with our multimeter. Also, Al deposited PDMS looks blackish (pls look to the last image below), so we thougth that the PDMS might be carbonized by the heat of the Thermal evaporator. So, I am going to look to the XRD analysis of this samples.
As for the questions, do you know any methods for increasing the properties of these thin films? And could I use some kind of adhesive layer for better thin film integrity? How could I deposit Ti on to PDMS without cracking it?
Dear Alp,
the Ti micro cracks may be due to a "thick" layer. I would try to reduce thickness. On the other case, you could create an Aluminum oxide layer by PECVD.
Hope this helps.
Dear Alp,
In addition to Martin' s suggestion, when you do aluminium thermal evaporation, the PDMS likely has some oxygen trapped into it, which oxidized aluminium layer during your deposition. Make sure put your PDMS substrates into a vacuum chamber to degas since PDMS is porous.
Best
Xuhua
The following article may help you:
Adrega, T. and Lacour, S.P., 2010. Stretchable gold conductors embedded in PDMS and patterned by photolithography: fabrication and electromechanical characterization. Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 20(5), p.055025.
Dr Azeez Barzinjy
Martin E. Baltazar-Lopez
Xuhua Wang
Thank you for your answers
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