The effect of bonding structure of diamond like carbon (DLC) film with surface nickel coating upon laser annealing

• Main Authors: Xu, Naiyun, Tsang, Siu Hon, Tan, Chong Wei, Teo, Hang Tong, Wang, Xincai, Tay, Beng Kang
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering; Amorphous Carbon; Graphitization;
• Online Access: http://www.academicpub.org/pnn/Home.aspx; https://hdl.handle.net/10356/151196
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Previous work has shown that the bonding structure and phase of amorphous carbon (a-C) can be modified by laser annealing. In this work, the effect of surface modification by metal coating on a-C during laser annealing was studied. A-C film was deposited by the filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) technique onto n-type (100) silicon substrate at room temperature. Nickel (Ni) was deposited on the surface of a-C films by electron beam (e-beam) evaporation method, and laser annealing with different laser energy density was performed on the a-C films with and without Ni coating. Visible Raman spectroscopy was used to examine the bonding structure evolution upon laser annealing and the effect on the bonding structure of a-C by introducing Ni onto the DLC film surface. The Raman spectra shows more pronounced change for a-C films with Ni coating than those without Ni coating upon laser annealing, and the Raman features also suggest that the Ni surface coating can enhance formation of the six-ring graphitic-like sp2 ordering. Electrical measurement shows a low resistive characteristic for both set of films due to laser induced conducting sp2 clusters formation.