Preparation of hydrogenated diamond-like carbon films using high-density pulsed plasmas of Ar/C2H2 and Ne/C2H2 mixture

Abstract

Hydrogenated diamond-like carbon films are prepared using reactive high-density pulsed plasmas of Ar/C2H2 and Ne/C2H2 mixture in the total pressure range from 0.5 to 2 Pa. The plasmas are produced using a reactive high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) system. A negative pulse voltage of −500 V is applied to the substrate for a period of 15 µs in the afterglow mode. The growth rate does not strongly depend on the type of ambient gas but it markedly increases to about 2.7 µm/h at a C2H2 fraction of 10% and a total pressure of 2 Pa with increasing C2H2 fraction. The marked increase in the growth rate means that the HiPIMS system can be regarded as a plasma source for the chemical vapor deposition process. The hardness of the films prepared by Ne/C2H2 plasmas is somewhat higher than that of the films prepared by Ar/C2H2 plasmas under the same operating conditions, and the difference becomes larger as the pressure increases. The hardness of the films prepared by Ne/C2H2 plasmas ranges between 11 and 18 GPa. In the Raman spectra, two very broad overlapping bands are assigned as the G (graphite) and D (disorder) bands. The peak position of the G band is roughly independent of the total pressure, whereas the FWHM of the G peak decreases with increasing total pressure as a whole.