Synthesis of nanostructure diamond-like carbon thin films by atmospheric pressure plasma jet

Abstract

In this work, diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films were prepared from Cyclohexane. Thin films were deposited on quartz substrate by atmospheric pressure Argon plasma jet system. The plasma jet system was applying high voltage sinusoidal waves of frequency 28 kHz and potential difference of 7.5kV peak to peak across the electrodes. The effect of annealing at 400, 500 and 600 °C under vacuum for two hours on optical properties and structural properties of the DLC thin films were investigated. This effect was clarified by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR, UV-Visible absorption, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Raman Spectroscopy. The X-ray diffraction patterns for the annealing DLC thin films show two broad peaks at 2θ, 26.62° and 51.58° corresponding to (002) and (102) plane of graphite and the broad peaks at 20 43.46° and 73.9° assigned to the (111) and (220) plane of diamond. The FTIR spectrum shows that the increasing in annealing temperature causes increasing in sp3. Scanning electron images show that the DLC nanoparticles have spherical shape with few clusters of particles, and the particles size become small with increasing the temperature, Raman spectroscopy show that the peaks position shifted toward the lower energies when the annealing temperature increase. The optical energy gap (Eg) increased from 2.71to 3.23 eV with increasing the annealing temperature from 400 to 600 °C. It can be concolude that the annealing leads to more diamond-like structure.