High rate deposition of amorphous hydrogenated carbon films by hollow cathode arc PECVD

Amorphous hydrogenated carbon films (a-C:H) are of increasing importance in science and applications. However, most deposition techniques applied suffer from a low deposition rate. In this paper, a high rate process based on hollow cathode arc PECVD is presented. A magnetically enhanced hollow cathode arc plasma has been used to activate the precursor acetylene. The argon-acetylene plasma has been characterized by energy-resolved mass spectrometry revealing a large variety of dissociation and polymerization products as well as their kinetic energy distributions, which are related to the spatial distribution of ion generation. A-C:H layers have been deposited on flat substrates with rates of up to 1 µm/min. Depending on the deposition conditions, polymeric, graphitic, and diamond-like carbon films with a nanoindentation hardness of 18.2 GPa have been produced and analyzed by Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. In order to obtain the film composition, elastic recoil detection analysis and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry have been applied.