Dear All
I want to deposit Gold (Au) nanoparticle layer on a thin polymer film using RF magnetron sputtering technique. But the condition is I have to vary the thickness of nanoparticle layers for each trial. For example: 2 nm, 5 nm, 7 nm etc. Now my question is how to control these desired thicknesses precisely while doing experiment? and how to measure the thickness for each individual sample? Is AFM a suitable characterization tool for this?
Your help will be appreciated very much. Thanks in advance
AFM as well as other microscopic methods are suitable for quality control after the deposition has ended.
While you're actually doing the experiment, possible options would be a crystal microbalance (but that doesn't work with all substrates and all diameters) or RHEED (which also doesn't always work).
Dear Abu,
To precisely control the thickness of AuNPs using a RF magnetron sputtering system, you can adjust the electric current or voltage, gas pressure and duration. There is no easy way that you have to repeat a few times to optimise the parameters until you can get the readings with desirable thickness by many practices.
AFM is definitely the way to determine such thin film thickness.
Best wishes
Xuhua
Thank you very much Dr. Wang and Dr. Weippert for your insightful suggestion
You may want to do a series of trials on a non-critical sample, at different current levels, partially masking the surface then use AFM or SEM to determine the thickness of the deposited layers. Repeat desired results w your good sample.
I used always AFM profile to measure thin film (nanoparticles and polymer).
AFM can be used but for more precise thicknesses use Ellipsometer technique
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