Statistical Study on Effect of Reactive Ion Etch Towards the Surface Morphology of Aluminum Pad

Abstract. Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) is a major process in the fabrication of semiconductor devices for transferring patterns from masks to semiconductor substrates. Design Of Experiment(DOE) has been used to study the effect of Reactive Ion Etch(RIE) towards surface morphology of aluminum bond pad. Important RIE factors involved in this experimental study are ratio of Tetrafluoromethane (CF4) and Argon gas flow, BIAS, and ICP power. Different combinations of these factors produces different results of surface morphologies which was obtained using Atomic Force Microscopic(AFM). Produced results shows that RMS is an important factor in surface characterization study and DOE offers a better way to optimize the desired outcome

Synthesis and characterisation of graphene-reinforced AA 2014 MMC using squeeze casting method for lightweight aerospace structural applications

The need for lightweight materials towards aerospace has increased prominently. This paper focuses on introducing a novel reinforcement mixture of graphene with Al 2014 powder synthesised through ball milling technique. The synthesized powder was utilized as a reinforcement to fabricate Al 2014 based MMCs through squeeze casting technique. The results exhibited that Al 2014 mixture with embedded and interlocked 2D-Grnp (2.517 g/cm3) matched the density of the matrix metal (2.771 g/cm3) that facilitated homogeneous dispersion of 2D-Grnp and solved the dispersion problems during stir casting. As a result, AA 2014 embedded with 2D-Grnp acted as a carrier to homogeneously disperse combined with the squeeze casting process leading to the production of homogeneously reinforced MMC. This can be considered as a potential fabrication route for the launch vehicle super lightweight fuel tank (SLWT) structural application. The final casted plate after T6 heat treatment with 0.5 wt% 2D-Grnp exhibited an improved tensile strength of 361 MPa (52% higher than the monolithic 2014 aluminium alloy) with total elongation of 21% and improved hardness of 119 HRB (45.5 % increase). Furthermore, SEM and TEM results exhibited that squeeze casting led to enhanced interfacial bonding between the 2D-Grnp and Al 2014