Capabilities of plasma beam discharge for the formation of diamond-like carbon films

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we describe the system developed on the basis of plasma beam discharge producing high density plasma (10 10 –10 13 cm −3 ). The system allows the formation of charged-particle flows (10–100 mA cm −2 ) at an energy of 60–200 eV onto a treated surface. We have presented results obtained for the diamond-like carbon films produced by this system. It was shown that the film resistivity increased from 10 8 to 10 12 Ω cm, and the optical band gap from 2.4 to 3.2 eV, depending on the type of charged particles (ions or electrons) incident on the grown layer surface. The addition of oxygen (up to 20%) to the original working gas permits the deposition of hard transparent diamond-like carbon films with a band gap of 3.5 eV.