NONDESTRUCTIVE CHARACTERIZATION OF MECHANICAL AND STRUCTURAL-PROPERTIES OF AMORPHOUS DIAMOND-LIKE CARBON-FILMS

Amorphous diamond-like carbon (DLC) films show promising properties fo r wear protection applications. Pulsed laser deposition (PLD), laser-i nduced pulsed vacuum are deposition (laser-arc) and mass-selected ion beam deposition (MSIBD) are techniques which enable deposition of DLC films with the desired properties by providing sufficiently high carbo n energy. Two non-destructive methods were used to determine the prope rties of films deposited by these three deposition techniques: (1) ell ipsometry, which gives information about the micro-structure through t he optical properties; and (2) laser-acoustic analysis enabling the me asurement of the Young's modulus of thin films down to less than 100 n m film thickness. These methods were used to investigate the effect of the carbon ion energy and the substrate temperature during deposition on the film quality. A clear correlation between the Young's modulus and the optical parameters was found. All three deposition techniques are characterized by a critical substrate temperature above which sp(2 ) rich films are deposited. The PLD and MSIBD systems have a higher io n energy and a lower deposition rate than the laser-are system. This i s the reason for the higher critical substrate temperature below which sp(3) rich films are formed for PLD and MSIBD compared with laser-are . (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A.