Metals such as Al that form stable oxides in contact with water can not be
electroplated in aqueous environment. Such an example is the case of
Silicon, one must ideally apply an adhesion layer and a seed layer. With Al
it is done with the so called zincate process where in a subsequent chemical
processing one generates nuclei of Ni which are electroplated afterwords.
Some recent works have shown progress in electroplating substrates such as
Si. See e.g. "Seedless electroplating on patterned Silicon", J. of
Micromechanics and Microengineering, 16 (2006), 51-56, the work done at
University of Twente, by Vargas, L.D. (Laura) et al. It may help to identify
some helpful steps.

Igor Kadija
ECSI FIBRotools

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sebastian Sosin" 
To: 
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 8:32 AM
Subject: [mems-talk] Copper plating on Aluminum seed layer

> Does anybody have any idea (hints, published papers, experience) about
> COPPER plating using an ALUMINUM seed layer or some other metal but NOT
> COPPER?