<title>Optical and mechanical properties of diamondlike carbon produced by dual ion beam sputtering technique</title>

Abstract

The diamond like carbon (DLC) is very hard, inert to chemical attack and transparent in the IR region. In order to increase the transparency of DLC, the percentage of Sp3 bonds must be increased. In this work, thin film of DLC were deposited by the Dual Ion Beam Sputtering technique. An argon ion beam sputters a graphite target and a second one assists the film during the growth. A set of samples were produced at different momentum transfer varying the energy and current density of assisting ion beam and the growth rate. The momentum transfer is defined P equals nc divided by nat (root) 2 mc Ec where nc is the number of recoiling carbon atoms, mat is the number of the carbon atoms in the volume interested at the collision cascade process and Ec is the energy of the recoils after the collision with the Ar ions, nc, nat, and Ec were calculated by the TRIM program. THe optical properties as the optical gap of the samples were related to the momentum transfer value. As far as the mechanical properties were concerned, the hardness value was measured by Knoop microindentation for all samples.© (1999) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.