Growth mechanism and composition of ultrasmooth a-C:H:Si films grown from energetic ions for superlubricity

Abstract

Growth mechanism and ion energy dependence of composition of ultrasmooth a-C:H:Si films grown from ionization of tetramethylsilane (TMS) and toluene mixture at a fixed gas ratio have been investigated by varying the applied bias voltage. The dynamic scaling theory is employed to evaluate the roughness evolution of a-C:H:Si films, and to extract roughness and growth exponents of α ∼ 0.51 and β ∼ 0, respectively. The atomically smooth surface of a-C:H:Si films with Ra ∼ 0.1 nm is thermally activated by the energetic ion-impact induced subsurface “polishing” process for ion dominated deposition. The ion energy (bias voltage) plays a paramount role in determining the hydrogen incorporation, bonding structure and final stoichiometry of a-C:H:Si films. The hydrogen content in the films measured by ERDA gradually decreases from 36.7 to 17.3 at. % with increasing the bias voltage from 0.25 to 3.5 kV, while the carbon content in the films increases correspondingly from 52.5 to 70.1 at. %. The Si content is kept almost constant at ∼9–10 at. %. Depending on the ion-surface interactions, the bonding structure of a-C:H:Si films grown in different ion energy regions evolves from chain-developed polymer-like to cross-linked diamond-like to sp2-bonded a–C as revealed by XPS, Raman, and FTIR analysis. Such a structural evolution is reflected in their measured nanomechanical properties such as hardness, modulus, and compressive stress. An enhanced viscoplastic behavior (i.e., viscoplastic exponent of ∼0.06) is observed for polymeric a-C:H:Si films. A hydrogen content threshold (H > 20 at. %) exists for the as-grown a-C:H:Si films to exhibit superlow friction in dry N2 atmosphere. An extremely low friction coefficient of ∼0.001 can be obtained for polymer-like a-C:H:Si film. These near-frictionless a-C:H:Si films are strongly promising for applications in industrial lubricating systems.