Fabrication and characterization of tetrahedral amorphous carbon films for some applications

Abstract

The filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) technique has proved to be a promising method for deposition of high quality and large uniformity tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) films on different substrate materials at room temperature. Our study shows that the predominant factor to determine the sp content in the film is the carbon ion energy and the deposition rate. About 88 % of the carbon atoms in the ta-C film deposited with the optimum condition are tetrahedrally bonded which is the same bonding structure as diamond.