Nanometre scale mechanical properties of extremely thin diamond-like carbon films

Abstract

Extremely thin diamond-like carbon (DLC) films are deposited by the filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) and plasma chemical vapour deposition (p-CVD) methods. The target thicknesses of the extremely thin protective DLC films deposited on a Si (100) surface by FCVA and p-CVD are 0?1, 0?4, 0?8, 1?0, 2?0, 5?0 and 100?0 nm. Nanoindentation hardness and nanowear resistance are evaluated by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The nanoindentation hardnesses of 100 nm thick DLC films deposited by FCVA and p-CVD are 57 and 25 GPa respectively. The nanowear test by AFM clarifies the mechanical properties of extremely thin DLC films. The wear depths of 1 and 2 nm thick FCVA-DLC films are extremely shallow. The wear depths of the 1?0 and 2?0 nm thick p-CVD-DLC films exceed the film thicknesses after five sliding cycles. These results reveal differences in the wear resistance of extremely thin DLC films and the superior mechanical properties of FCVA-DLC thin films.

Nanomechanical Evaluation of Ultrathin Lubricant Films on Magnetic Disks by Atomic Force Microscopy

“…Figure 14 shows the Raman spectra of DLC films with a thickness of 100 nm prepared by FCVA and ECR-CVD. The spectra show that the FCVA-DLC (ta-C) film contained a large number of sp 3 bonds than the ECR-CVD (a-CH) film (Ferrari, 2002;Lemoinea et al, 2007;Miyake et al, 2009). …”

“…The depth profiles were shown in Fig. 16.The FCVA-DLC and ECR-CVD-DLC films had actual thicknesses of 107 and 97 nm and their densities were 3.3 and 1.9 g/cm 3 , evaluated by Rutherford back scattering (RBS), respectively (Miyake et al, 2009). …”

“…The target thicknesses of films were 0.8, 1.0, 2.0, 5.0, and 100 nm, where the film thickness was adjusted by changing the deposition time. The properties of these DLC films such as their structure, composition and actual thickness were evaluated using Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and AES (Miyake et al, 2009). Figure 14 shows the Raman spectra of DLC films with a thickness of 100 nm prepared by FCVA and ECR-CVD.…”

“…Extremely thin protective DLC films were deposited on Si (100) wafers by FCVA (ta-C) and ECR-CVD (Hyodo et al, 2001;Miyake et al, 2009;Robertson, 2008;Yamamoto et al, 2000Yamamoto et al, , 2003. The target thicknesses of films were 0.8, 1.0, 2.0, 5.0, and 100 nm, where the film thickness was adjusted by changing the deposition time.…”

“…The extremely thin DLC films were deposited by the FCVA and plasma chemical vapor deposition (p-CVD) methods (Miyake et al, 2009). Nanoindentation hardness and nanowear resistance were evaluated by AFM.…”