High adhesion of diamond-like films achieved by the pulsed arc-discharge method
Abstract The existence of an extremely good adhesion between a silicon substrate and hard diamond-like films (sp 3 bonding 78%) prepared by the pulsed filtered arc-discharge method has been pointed out. The deposition of the films was performed at room temperature with the rate 1 μm/h. The high adhesion was achieved by pretreating the silicon surface with “high energy” (140 eV) carbon plasma ions. The compressive stress of the films arisen during the preparation process caused the silicon surface layer to peel off even to the depth of 25 μm in bulk silicon. This effect indicates difficulties in the use of thick (> 1.5 μm) diamond-like films in the applications.