Fc. Marques et Rg. Lacerda, Hardness and stress of amorphous carbon films deposited by glow discharge and ion beam assisting deposition, BRAZ J PHYS, 30(3), 2000, pp. 527-532
The hardness and stress of amorphous carbon films prepared by glow discharg
e and by ion beam assisting deposition are investigated. Relatively hard an
d almost stress free amorphous carbon films were deposited by the glow disc
harge technique. On the other hand, by using the ion beam assisting deposit
ion, hard films were also obtained with a stress of the same order of those
found in tetrahedral amorphous carbon films. A structural analysis indicat
es that all films are composed of a sp(2)-rich network. These results contr
adict the currently accepted concept that both stress and hardness are only
related to the concentration Of sp(3) sites. Furthermore, the same results
also indicate that the sp(2) sites may also contribute to the hardness of
the films.