Characterization of Thick Amorphous Carbon Films Formed by Pulse Bias Filtered Cathodic Vacuum Arc

Abstract

To form several-micrometer-thick diamond-like carbon (DLC) films, pulse bias filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposition was performed. In this study, nonhydrogenated DLC films were evaluated using visible and ultraviolet Raman spectroscopy, an electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and a nano indenter. All observations indicated that the sp3 ratio of the DLC films decreases with increasing applied pulse bias. However, a moderately high sp3 ratio of 42.3% was obtained for 500-nm-thick DLC films with a compressive stress of 3.5 GPa formed at a pulse bias of 500 V, a pulse width of 25 µs, and a frequency of 1500 Hz.