Effect of high substrate bias and hydrogen and nitrogen incorporation on filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposited tetrahedral amorphous carbon films

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The application of a sufficiently high negative substrate bias, during the growth of tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C), is usually associated with low sp 3 bonding configuration and stressed films. However, in an effort to understand and utilize the higher pseudo thermo dynamical conditions during the film growth, at high negative substrate bias (− 300 V), reported here is a study on ta-C films grown under different hydrogen and nitrogen concentration. As grown ta-C films were studied under different negative substrate bias conditions. The variation of the sp 3 content and sp 3/sp 2 ratio in the ta-C films exhibits a trend similar to those reported in literature, with a subtle variation in this report being the substrate bias voltage, which was observed to be around − 200 V, for obtaining the highest sp 3 (80%) bonding and sp 3/sp 2 (3.95) ratio. The hydrogen and nitrogen incorporated ta-C films studied, at a bias of − 300 V, show an increase in sp 3 (87–91%) bonding and sp 3/sp 2 (7–10) ratio in the range of studies reported. The inference is drawn on the basis of the set of data obtained from measurements carried out using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray induced Auger electron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy of as grown and hydrogen and nitrogen incorporated ta-C films deposited using an S bend filtered cathodic vacuum arc system. The study indicates the possibility of further tailoring ta-C film properties and also extending capabilities of the cathodic arc system for developing carbon based films for electronics and tribological applications.