The valves are made up of Stainless Steel and the nanocoatings will be deposited on the stainless steel.
If the surface is very smooth ellipsometry may help. If not, you may try angle dependent XPS, RBS (Rutherford backscattering), ion sputtering combined with surface analytical techniques. Some kind of calibration is needed (e.g. sputtering rates etc.).
If your valve is less than 1 cm thickness, your can use SEM to measure the coating thickness, or else, better you choose ellipsometer to determine the coating thickness. If the coating is multiple layers, use Raman depth profiling technique to find the thickness of each layer.
The coating needs to be done on the inner surface of the nuts. The inner surface of the nuts is threaded or corrugated uniformly. I just found out that there is a silver coating on the inner surface of the nuts. So, SEM stays an option but ellipsometer might be tough as the surface is not thouroughly smooth. My lab has limited equipments for now. Valves will be tested in the second phase.
Also, since I am doing an independent experiment on my own. Can you guys guide me on the procedure to measure the thickness under SEM microscope as well>
Thanks,
Bhumika
Sample holder tilting and the rotating option are available in SEM, so you can tilt and rotate the sample as well to find the exact thickness of your coating.
hello, I don't know if you have access to it but AFM or profilometer measurements could also be an option.
Good luck
It seems that you only have access to SEM. Is there an option of EDX? If yes, I would suggest tilting the sample at two different angles, figuring out the peak sizes of Fe; and then based on that, calculating the thickness.
Another option is to measure the resistance. You might have to make one yourself, but at some level, a four point probe would do the job for you.
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