Paper Title
An Inexpensive Arduino-Based Silar Coating Machine for Research in Thin Film Coating
Abstract
Thin film deposition on materials have empowered an extensive variety of technological leaps forward in areas
such as optics, chemistry, electronic semiconductor devices, mechanics etc. The successive ionic layer adsorption and
reaction (SILAR) is technique in which thin films from aqueous precursor solution are chemically deposited in a step-wise
manner. The work deals with design and fabrication of inexpensive but effective multifunctional SILAR coating machine
based on Arduino microcontroller platform. The objective of work is to use open source parts and reduce the design
complexity permitting utilization of the machine to end-users without cutting edge hardware abilities. The main core of the
system is a USB connected Arduino microcontroller. The pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal of Arduino was used to
drive motors allowing movement of power screw and arms. The machine was demonstrated for coating silver nano-particles
on copper substrate using silver nitrate and sodium borohydride as reducing agent. The experiment conducted and results
illustrate that this machine can be used to coat thin film, the deposition rate and the thickness of the film can be easily
controlled by changing the deposition cycles and immersion timing. Because of low cost and ease of using, machine can be
advantageous to students and researchers for demonstration purpose.
Keywords - SILAR coating, Arduino, XRD, SEM, Silvernanoparticles.