Study on electroforming Ni-Fe-SiC alloy for micro fabrication

Ni-Fe-SiC alloy is a promising material in the fabrication of micro actuator. Electrolytic codeposition technique was adopted in the deposition of Ni-Fe-SiC composite coating on stainless steel substrate, using nickel alloyed with iron as the binder phase and SiC as dispersed particles. The morphology analysis indicated that the deposit with SiC nanoparticles is level and compact and the crystal-planes of the deposit are (111), (220) and (200). The resistivity of deposit is about 30×10^-8 Ω·m. When the loading of Fe (wt.%) range from 10% to 50% in the deposit, the electrodeposit has a strong paramagnetism effect with the smallest coercivity of 2.75×10^-2 A/m. The remanence shows a monotonic decrease with the increasing of iron content in deposit. It is proved that the electroformed Ni-Fe-SiC alloy has a good electromagnetic property and higher corrosion resistance (with the corrosion rate: 0.17mg/dm² per hour in 2M HCl) than that of electroforming Ni-Fe alloy (with the corrosion rate: 0.23mg/dm² per hour).