CARBON-BASED NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS VIA CLUSTER BEAM DEPOSITION - AMULTITECHNIQUE INVESTIGATION

The use of clusters as elemental building blocks can open new routes t owards the creation of a new class of architectures and nanostructures . We report the synthesis of nanocrystalline carbon thin films produce d by depositing supersonic clusters. An optimized version of a pulsed are cluster ion source (PACIS) was utilized for the production of inte nse and stable ionized and neutral cluster supersonic beams. Laser pho toionization and mass spectrometric techniques have been used to chara cterize the source, the cluster mass distribution and energy. A set of techniques was then applied to evaluate the structural and electronic properties of the thus-grown nanocrystalline carbon films encompassin g Raman and C Is X-ray photoemission spectroscopies (XPS). (C) 1998 El sevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.