Electron cyclotron resonance chemical vapor deposition of precious metal-doped diamond-like carbon films

The work presented in this thesis is focused on the development of a novel process for synthesizing of metal and non-metal doped diamond-like carbon films. The process utilizes metal organic liquid precursor decomposition using an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique.; For the proposed synthesis studies, an ECR CVD system was designed and assembled in our laboratory. This system is equipped with an ECR source, a RF substrate bias and a metal organic precursor chemical delivery system.; Un-doped, nitrogen doped and ruthenium doped diamond-like carbon films were synthesized using methane/toluene, pyridine and bis-(ethylcyclopentadienyl)-ruthenium as source gases, respectively. Diamond-like nature of the films, i.e., sp 3 carbon bonding state, was confirmed by Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (FT-IR). The existence of carbon-nitrogen bonding in the films deposited using pyridine precursor was also confirmed by FT-IR spectroscopy.; Refractive index of un-doped and nitrogen doped films were measured by using thin film measurement system. The comparison of refractive indexes of un-doped and nitrogen doped films implied increasing of graphitization of the film when incorporated with nitrogen.; The direct current (DC) conductivity data of ruthenium doped diamond-like carbon films showed strong dependency on process pressure. The films deposited with ruthenium precursor exhibited similar diamond-like carbon structure, but with several orders of magnitude lower in conductivity. The strong dependence of conductivity with pressure is hypothesized as that resulting from differences between the solubility of metal and carbon in the gas phase as a function of pressure.