• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.8-15
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• 2002

Tetrahedral amorphous carbon(ta-C) films were deposited by the filtered vacuum arc(FVA) process. The FVA process has many advantages such as high ionization ratio and the ion energy, which is suitable for dense amorphous carbon film deposition. However, the energy of the carbon ion cannot be readily controlled by manipulating the arc source parameters. In order to control the film properties in wide range, we investigated the dependence of the film properties on the substrate bias voltage. The mechanical properties and the density of the film exhibit the maximum values at about -100 V of the bias voltage. The maximum values of hardness and density were respectively 54$\pm$3 GPa and 3.6$\pm$0.4 g/㎤, which are 3 to 5 times higher than those of the films deposited by RF PACVD or ion beam process. The details of the atomic bond structure were analysed by Raman and NEXAFS spectroscopy. The change in the film properties for various bias voltages could be understood in the view of the $sp^2$ and $sp^3$ bond fraction in the deposited films.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.25-34
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• 2003

Deposition behavior of hard amorphous carbon film was investigated by molecular dynamic simulation using Tersoff potential which was suggested for the interaction potential between carbon atoms. When high energy carbon atoms were collided on diamond (100) surface, dense amorphous carbon film could be obtained. Physical properties of the simulated carbon film were compared with those of the film deposited by filtered cathodic arc process. As in the experimental result, the most diamond-like film was obtained at an optimum kinetic energy of the incident carbon atoms. The optimum kinetic energy was 50 eV, which is comparable to the experimental observation. The simulated film was amorphous with short range order of diamond lattice. At the optimum kinetic energy condition, we found that significant amount of carbon atom were placed at a metastable site of distance 2.1 $\AA$. By melting and quenching simulation of diamond lattice, it was shown that this metastatic peak is Proportional to the quenching rate. These results show that the hard and dense diamond-like film could be obtained when the localized thermal spike due to the collision of high energy carbon atom can be effectively dissipated to the lattice.