Study of diamond like carbon coatings formed by pulsed hydrocarbon ions irradiations over different substrate materials using plasma focus device

Pulsed hydrocarbon ions produced in a plasma focus device were used to irradiate different substrate materials (Si, Ti, Mo and W) and to deposit thin films of carbon material over it. High energetic and high intensity pulsed hydrocarbon ions were produced when plasma focus device was filled with 0.5 mbar of acetylene gas and operated at 2 kJ. Effects of substrate materials properties, its thermal evolution under pulsed irradiation of energetic ions and plasma streams on the deposited films have been studied. Visible Raman spectroscopic measurements confirmed that deposited films were of diamond-like-carbon. Fraction of sp3 bonded carbon in films on different substrate materials (16%, 8.7%, 13% and 18.9% on Si, Ti, Mo and W respectively) was found to be correlated to substrate materials thermal properties i.e. high fraction of sp3 bonded carbon was observed over substrate materials having high thermal conductivity. Carbon atom concentrations were measured to be different (22.46 at. %, 22.7 at. %, 10.4 at. % and 32 at. % on Si, Ti, Mo and W respectively) over different substrates. Surface morphologies of DLC were also observed to be different for different substrates. On inserting graphite at anode tip, fraction of sp3 bonded carbon in DLC coating over Si substrate increased to 19.5%.