Iron, nitrogen and silicon doped diamond like carbon (DLC) thin films: A comparative study

Abstract The X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), valence band photoemission (VB-PES) and Raman spectroscopy results show that the incorporation of nitrogen in pulsed laser deposited diamond like carbon (DLC) thin films, reverts the sp 3 network to sp 2 as evidenced by an increase of the sp 2 cluster and I D /I G ratio in C K -edge XANES and Raman spectra respectively which reduces the hardness/Young's modulus into the film network. Si-doped DLC film deposited in a plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition process reduces the sp 2 cluster and I D /I G ratio that causes the decrease of hardness/Young's modulus of the film structure. The Fe-doped DLC films deposited by dip coating technique increase the hardness/Young's modulus with an increase of sp 3 -content in DLC film structure.