Characterization of electrodeposited Ni-Fe-SiC alloys for microelectromechanical applications

Abstract

Ni-Fe-SiC alloy is a promising material for the fabrication of microactuators. In this article, the electrolytic codeposition technique is used to deposit the Ni-Fe-SiC composite onto stainless-steel substrates, where nickel becomes alloyed with iron as the binder phase, and SiC becomes alloyed as dispersed particles. Analysis of the morphology indicates that the deposited SiC nanoparticles are compact, with the orientation of the deposited crystal planes indexed as (111), (200), (220), (311), and (222). The resistivity of the deposited SiC nanoparticles is about 30× 10-8 Ωm. When the loading of Fe (wt %) ranges from 10% to 50% in the deposit, the electrodeposit shows a strong paramagnetism with a lowest value of coercivity of 2.75× 10-2 A/m. In addition, the remanence shows a monotonic decrease with an increasing iron content in the deposit. It is demonstrated that the electroformed Ni-Fe-SiC alloy has better electromagnetic properties and a higher corrosion resistance (with a corrosion rate of 0.17 mg/ dm2 h 2M HCl) than the electroformed Ni-Fe alloy (with a corrosion rate of 0.23 mg/ dm2h). © 2010 American Vacuum Society.