Diamond-Like Carbon Deposition for Tribological Applications at Los Alamos National Laboratory

ABSTRACTDiamond-like carbon (DLC) films have been deposited on silicon using two deposition techniques. Both deposition techniques used acetylene (C2H2) plasmas as the carbon/hydrogen source. One technique, that is relatively well known, employs an rf-plasma with an associated self-bias on the substrate. DLC films have also been deposited using a pulsed-bias method. Coatings of various thickness have been deposited using both deposition methods, and various combinations of gas pressure and bias. Coating characteristics, such as composition, density, and sp3 content, of selected films will be presented. For each deposition technique, the correlation between coating characteristics, mechanical properties and tribological behavior is presented.