Electroless Plating of Thin Gold Films Directly onto Silicon Nitride Thin Films and into Micropores

A method to directly electrolessly plate silicon-rich silicon nitride with thin gold films was developed and characterized. Films with thicknesses \u3c100nm were grown at 3 and 10°C between 0.5 and 3 hours, with mean grain sizes between ~20-30nm. The method is compatible with plating free-standing ultrathin silicon nitride membranes, and we successfully plated the interior walls of micropore arrays in 200nm-thick silicon nitride membranes. The method is thus amenable to coating planar, curved, and line-of-sight-obscured silicon nitride surfaces