Rapid thermal annealing study on the metal containing amorphous carbon films

Abstract The tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) films deposited by filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) technique contain very high sp3 fraction. However, the high compressive stress of the ta-C films causes film delamination and limits its potential applications. Stress reduction by incorporating a small percentage of a metallic element such as Al has been reported. In this work, we investigate the rapid thermal annealing (RTA) of Al containing amorphous carbon (a-C:Al) films. The results are compared with that of ta-C films. The microstructure and surface morphology of the films subjected to different annealing temperature were studied by Raman spectrometer and atomic force microscope (AFM), respectively. Some mechanisms were suggested to explain the stress reduction of the films that were subjected to different annealing temperatures. Complete stress relief was observed when the a-C:Al (5 at.%) films were RTA at 800 °C for duration of 2 min.