Sputter coating of Nickel on Aluminium

I am inquiring about sputter coating nickel rather than electroless plating. I am using this technique to coat both aluminium and copper. Has this technique being successful. I intend to use a double zincating method on the aluminium before hand. Also, does tin plate well to nickel. I am looking at thermal evaporation for this.

Thank you for your help,

Sputtering nickel is not very easy. The problem is that nickel is magnetic and interferes with the magnetron field. It would probably be easier to e-beam evaporate the nickel, or use a cathodic arc. If you evaporate, you can use the same basic configuration as you will with the tin, i.e., the metal source at the bottom of the chamber, so fixturing and coverage will be identical.