NITROGEN IMPLANTATION INTO GLASSY-CARBON AS AN ATTEMPT TO GROW A CARBON NITRIDE THIN-FILM

The current interest in carbon nitride comes from the recent theoretic al prediction that this material could have superior structural, therm al and electronic properties to those of diamond. Over the last few ye ars considerable efforts have been made in an attempt to grow thin fil ms of the beta-C3N4 phase by employing various deposition techniques. In the present work, the possibility of carbon nitride formation by io n implantation of nitrogen into glassy carbon was investigated with pa rticular attention to the effect of the implantation parameters and po st-annealing processes. The distribution and bonding states of the imp lanted nitrogen as well as the composition and the structure of the mo dified layer have been studied by AES, XPS and Raman techniques. High- energy, up to 50 keV, and high-dose, up to 1 x 10(18) cm(-2), nitrogen ion implantations into glassy carbon were performed as an attempt to form a continuous carbon nitride layer. Low-energy (0.5 keV) nitrogen implantation was performed as a model study of possible chemical bond formation between nitrogen and carbon atoms. In this work we present e xperimental data demonstrating the predominant formation of an almost unpolarized carbon-nitrogen bond during hot nitrogen implantation. Suc h bonds are expected to be present in the elusive carbon nitride beta- phase.