Re: Gold - how to polish it down to NANOmeter scale roughness features?

Jean-Michel Friedt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > get.  It is best to start with an ultra-smooth surface first and then
> > vapor deposit gold onto it.  We routinely get about a 1 nm finish
> > (measured with AFM) this way.  If you are interested, I can reccomend
> > some ways to get an ultra-smooth finish before vapor deposition.
> 
> I would be interested as well.
> Typically sputtered gold on flat quartz (<1 nm peak to peak) leads
> to 2 to 5 nm peak to peak roughness. Less than 1 nm after Au deposition
> would be great.
> 
> Jean-Michel


You also might try sputter deposition of a 60/40 gold/Pd alloy as it
has much smaller grain structure than pure gold.

For our gold deposition, we use electron beam evaporation at a rate of
.5 angstrom/sec and a substrate temperature of about 100 degrees C.
Measured with a Wyko Topo 3D profileometer, we get about 1-1.2 nm over
a spatial period of 50 microns.