| AVS 55th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Plasma Science and Technology | Thursday Sessions |
| Session PS2-ThM |
| Session: | Plasma Modeling |
| Presenter: | Y. Murakami, CANON ANELVA CORPORATION Japan |
| Authors: | Y. Murakami, CANON ANELVA CORPORATION Japan S. Horiguchi, CANON ANELVA CORPORATION Japan S. Hamaguchi, Osaka University, Japan |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Diamond-like carbon (DLC) films have attracted much attention in the coating technology community. In our experiments, DLC films as protection layers for data recoding disks have been developed. Characteristics of DLC films are generally determined by the amount of sp3 hybridized bonds present in the films, which may be controlled by hydrocarbon species and its injection energy used for the deposition process. Various mechanisms of formation of sp3 hybridized bonds in DLC films have been proposed,1 but some details are yet to be understood better. In this work, in an attempt to establish a high quality DLC deposition process, we have used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to understand interaction between carbon containing gaseous radical species and an amorphous carbon (α-C) surface. Especially focused in this work are interactions of incoming CH3 and CH species with an unhydrogenated α-C surface. The interatomic potential functions used in this study are the same as those used in Ref.2. In simulations charge-neutral CH3 or CH radical species are injected 300 times (7.5×1015cm-2 dose) normally into the top surface of the substrate with incident energies in the range from 2eV to 50eV. The substrate temperature is kept at room temperature (300K) at the beginning of every injection. In our results, it is found that the sticking probabilities of both C and H atoms of the incoming to the substrate surface depend on the incident energy. It is also shown that the sticking probability of a CH radical is higher than that of a CH3 radical in the entire energy range. It is due to the fact that a CH radical has more dangling bonds that energetically favor forming complete bonds with C atoms of the substrate. The fraction of sp3 hybridization bonds is also found to be higher in the case of CH3 injections. This indicates that, with the availability of more hydrogen atoms, a carbon atom tends to form more diamond-like structures. These results may be used for the development of deposition processes for high quality DLC films.
1 J. Robertson, Materials Science and Engineering, R37 (2002) 129.
2 H. Yamada and S. Hamaguchi, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 47 (2005) A11.