High purity (99.995) nickel foils (50 um thick)
Pd coating is meant to reduce background current on oxidation side of Devanathan cell
Plasma etcher and sputter coater are in different buildings
Any info on oxide film formation at nickel/air interface would be appreciated.
2020-02-19 update: The sputter coater I use is the Quorum Q150T. In the manual, I was unable to find an option for etching, but found something referencing "target cleaning" using a shutter mechanism.
Many sputter coaters have mode "etching", with reversed (compared to sputtering) polarity. Not as strong as a dedicated etcher, but I think you can use it to remove thin oxide layer developed during specimen transfer.
Have you done any analysis to check the formation of oxide on Ni surface? If there is formation of oxide then you should heat treat the sample in reducing environment before you use it for further process. If oxidation rate is too high then logically you should find the alternative. Without breaking vacuum, you should deposit both the layers then.
Hopefully Ni is not the more reactive element vs oxygen however if the equipments are in two separate buildings I think is very critical.
The optimal solution is to preserve vacuum.
Then, the sample holder of the sputter coater can be biased ? If yes, apply a negative bias of some tens of volts and keep a shutter on the sputter source in order to refresh the surface cleaning. Then, proceed with deposition.
Best regards, Simone
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