Thermal stability of pulse electroplated gold films: SEM-EBSD studies

This paper reports the effect of annealing at various temperatures on microstructure and microtexture of the gold films deposited onto SiO2/Si(100) substrate using pulsed electrodeposition (PED). The samples were annealed for 3 days at 850oC and for 5 hours at 900oC and 910oC. The microstructure and thermal stability of the electrochemically deposited gold films before and after annealing was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) techniques. It is found that with increase of the annealing temperature the grain size of the deposits, the intensity of <0 0 1>//GD fiber texture and the volume fraction, average grain size of cube and rotated cube texture components are also increased whereas the number of grains decreased. Though maximum intensity of the <0 0 1>//GD fiber texture increases upon annealing, the deposition texture of gold film remains unchanged. The transformation of texture component of the annealed gold samples is explained by grain growth only. Correspondence to: Suhash R Dey, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy-502285, India, Tel: +91(0)4