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Abstract
In this work, the synthesis and characterization of hydrogenated diamond-like carbon (HDLC) nanocomposite thin films with embedded metallic Ag and Cu nanoparticles (NPs) are studied. These nanocomposite films were deposited using a hybrid technique with independent control over the carbon and metal sources. The metallic nanoparticles were directly deposited from the gas phase, avoiding surface diffusion of metal species on the deposition surface. The structural features, surface topography and optical properties of pure and nanocomposite HDLC films are studied and the effect of metal introduction into the carbon matrix is discussed. The interactions between the carbon ion beam and the NPs are considered and it is demonstrated that the nanocomposite HDLC:metal films, especially for Cu NPs, can retain the transparency level of the pure HDLC, by limiting the interactions between metal and carbon during deposition.
Highlights
Amorphous carbon (a–C) and its hydrogenated form (a–C:H) have attracted significant attention in the scientific community due to their interesting properties such as chemical inertness, low friction coefficient, wear resistance, optical transparency, and biocompatibility, among others [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The normalized X-ray reflectivity (XRR) patterns of the pure hydrogenated diamond-like carbon (HDLC) samples are shown in Figure 1a, with an offset in the vertical axis intentionally introduced for clarity
The amplitude changes of the reflectivity curves in the angular range between 1◦ and 2◦ 2θ are attributed to the formation of an intermediate layer between the silicon substrate and the amorphous hydrogenated carbon film due to the high kinetic energy of impacting species which is above the sub-plantation threshold [33,34,35]
Summary
Amorphous carbon (a–C) and its hydrogenated form (a–C:H) have attracted significant attention in the scientific community due to their interesting properties such as chemical inertness, low friction coefficient, wear resistance, optical transparency, and biocompatibility, among others [1,2,3,4,5,6]. All these properties arise from the complexity and the configurational possibilities of the amorphous network pertinent to C–C and C–H bonds. The deposition of DLC and HDLC films is usually based on some variant of the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique, such as capacitively coupled plasma enhanced
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