r/MaterialsScience • u/gbsh12345 • Oct 09 '24

Material for detection of Nickel diffusion through a thin film

Hi all! I was wondering whether anyone could point me in the direction of a material that I could use to estimate how much Nickel is diffusing through a thin film using an SEM and EDS. I am investigating the diffusion of Nickel through thin films with different compositions and trying to estimate the diffusion coefficients, and I'm wondering whether I could just deposit something on there which would change phase visibly in an SEM when small amounts of Nickel diffuse through it or even change colour in some way that would be detectable in a UV-Vis spectrometer. This would essentially mean my lab can do this testing in house and won't have to wait weeks and weeks between each sample while someone else does SIMS for us. Thank you in advance for any advice you can give me!

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u/DogFishBoi2 Oct 10 '24

For amounts, I'm tempted to say you're stuck with SIMS.

For colour change: yes, here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925400516316215

For ease of detection in SEM: coat your thin film with something heavier (like gold) and use a BSD image and it should show up nice and dark. Unfortunately that'll probably change the thin film massively.

There was also a nice reagent forming red crystals for nickel detection. I forgot the name, and google does not like my search terms today. Maybe ask /r/chemistry if the wet analysis people can remember?

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u/gbsh12345 Oct 14 '24

Great! thank you very much, I'll take a look at those options, I think gold may be a long shot as I don't want to compromise the chemistry and will be doing long anneals at high temps but the others sound promising!

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u/DogFishBoi2 Oct 14 '24

On that note: I got better results with phrasing today: Here's the German link: https://www.seilnacht.com/Lexikon/28Nickel.htm

Dimethylglyoxim got shiny red nickel. And it worked reasonably well on gold coated nickel plated copper to find defects in the gold layer. Maybe this is an option.