Hydrocarbon Plasma of a Low-Pressure Arc Discharge for Deposition of Highly-Adhesive Hydrogenated DLC Films

Plasma generator based on non-self-sustained low-pressure arc discharge has been examined as a tool for deposition of highly-adhesive hydrogenated amorphous diamond-like carbon(DLC) films. Since the discharge is stable in wide range of gas pressures and currents, this plasma source makes possible to realize both plasma-immersion ion implantation(PIII) and plasma-immersion ion deposition(PIID) in a unified vacuum cycle. The plasma parameters were measured as functions of discharge current. Discharge and substrate bias voltage parameters have been determined for the PIII and PIID modes. For PIID it has been demonstrated that hard and well-adherent DLC coating are produced at 200-500 eV energies per deposited carbon atom. The growth rates of DLC films in this case are about 200-300 nm/h. It was also shown that short(∼60$\mu\textrm{s}$) high-voltage(> 1kV) substrate bias pulses are the most favorable for achieving high hardness and good adhesion of DLC, as well as for reducing of residual intrinsic stress are.