Mesoscale Compositionally Modulated Nanocrystalline Ni-Fe Electrodeposits for Nanopatterning Applications

A considerable range of surface nanostructures can be fabricated by the selective dissolution of elements or phases from metallic alloys. Selectively etched electrodeposited multilayers may find useful application in optoelectronic and MEMS devices. One issue with electrodeposited multilayers is that the fine-scale multilayer structure can often exhibit significant waviness if the band layer spacing is on the same order of magnitude as the grain size. In the present study, the mean grain size was reduced to below 10 nm in a compositionally modulated Ni-Fe alloy. Preferential etching on the electroform cross-section resulted in highly uniform and directional surface channels. The evolution of this nanopatterned surface morphology was characterized by atomic force microscopy and directional roughness parameters were obtained