I am refurbishing an old Blazer - SCD 040 Sputter machine. I am having trouble standardizing a gold sputter protocol. For a 5nm thickness, the instructions suggest 15mA at a working distance of 50nm about 30secs. With this configuration I am still getting a lot of interference and charge-up when analyzing my samples. I played around with the settings and tried again but now the thickness is too thick and easily visible even at 30k mag. I know gold particles can be visible at around 45-60k mag, and I want to take images at around 40k mag.
It looks like you have a problem with specimen, not coater. On the first picture we see some contamination. Particles of dust, soil, or something else, but not gold. Charging on second picture could be caused by:
a) poor contact of top surface of specimen with substrate; could be improved with a small drop of conductive glue connecting surface with substrate.
b) rich surface topography; specimen may need 2-3 coatings under different angles.
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