Hydrogen-free deposition of diamond-like coatings from a graphite source

Abstract

We successfully deposited diamond-like hydrogen-free carbon coatings by pulsed electron beam vapor deposition (by pseudospark discharges), which is a novel technique in this field. Transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction demonstrate that these layers consist essentially of two components: (i) amorphous spherical particles with an average diameter of 50 nm, which form an amorphous particle network, and (ii) single crystalline diamond crystallites of up to 10 μm in diameter. The investigation of the amorphous regions by parallel electron energy loss spectroscopy permits to distinguish amorphous carbon and amorphous diamond.