When I am doing Gold sputter coating on my PDMS sample (have some micro-structures) for further SEM investigation, I found some type of structure damage on the surface.
How can avoid this?
Comment and suggestion welcome.
The kinetic energy of the gold particles could be high enough to damage the material at nano or micro scale.
You could change the current and discharge time in the sputtering machine and optimise the condition where your material does not get damaged.
PDMS can be tricky to image with EM. Could you post an image of a damaged sample? It will be easier to make recommendations if we can see the specific type of damage you are experiencing.
In order to make a proper suggestion it is necessary to have more information:
How do you know you structure wasn't damage before coating if you couldn't see it under SEM?
What are the parameters during the Au coating? Pressure, rate deposition, etc?
How do you prepare you PDMS micro features?
You will need to mount your PDMS on something rigid so that it does not flex after sputtering. If it flexes, your thin gold coating will crack.
I was thinking of reducing the sputtering power, but I guess that is basically the same as reducing sputtering current or deposition rate.
I have no idea about PDMS, but there are some materials whose surface features does not survive sputter coating. The best way to observe these specimens - without any coating, at low accelerating voltages, 0.5-1.5 kV.
Example. Pictures of coated and not coated specimen:
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