Hydrogen and disorder in diamond-like carbon

Diamond-like carbon is a system of rather high disorder as it has a wide optical absorption tail and a high density of paramagnetic defects. The defect density
remains high even in DLCs containing 30-60% hydrogen, so hydrogen does not appear to passivate defects well unlike in a-Si:H. To investigate the role of hydrogen
on the disorder in DLCs we have investigated the effect of low concentrations of hydrogen on the disorder in ta-C, by introducing 10(-6)-10(-3) mbar hydrogen into
the deposition of ta-C by filtered cathodic vacuum are (FCVA), which corresponds to 0.1-15 at.% hydrogen in the films. Higher pressures of hydrogen reduces the
ionisation leading to sp(2) bonding, and ultimately the thermalisation of the plasma leads to nanotubes and fullerenes. The deposited ta-C:H films were investigated by
electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), Raman spectroscopy, optical measurements, electronic transport and N-15 resonant nuclear reaction analysis. Plasma
characterisation with a retarding field analyser showed that the ion current density remains nearly unchanged in the pressure range used to deposit the films. Raman
measurements indicate the onset of clustering of sp(2) sites when the hydrogen pressure exceeds 2 x 10(-4) mbar. We find that small amounts of hydrogen increase
the optical gap up to 2X10(-6) mbar hydrogen pressure, and then the band gap decreases continuously. The absorption tail sharpens by the addition of hydrogen, as
measured by photothermal deflection spectroscopy (PDS) and thus confirms the Raman measurements that suggest that the order in the material increases with
increasing hydrogen content. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.