Study of the effect of different aluminium surface pretreatments on the deposition of thin non‐functional silane coatings

Abstract This paper focuses on the effect of aluminium surface pretreatment on the formation of thin non‐functional silane films. Three pretreatments were used to prepare the aluminium surface before the deposition of silane films. The generated surfaces were characterized before and after the silane film deposition by infrared spectroscopic ellipsometry (IRSE) and by the combination of SEM, AES and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), respectively. It is demonstrated that the amounts of hydroxyl groups at the aluminium surface provided by the different pretreatments strongly influence the initiation and the formation of the silane films. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.