Mechanical properties of alternating high-low sp³ content thick non-hydrogenated diamond-like amorphous carbon films

Thick non-hydrogenated DLC films (∼ 1μm), consisting of alternating sub-layers of high/low sp³ content, were deposited onto n++ Si substrates using the filtered cathodic vacuum arc method. These films were systematically studied to determine how the changes in composition of the sub-layers would affect the mechanical properties such as intrinsic stress, hardness, friction coefficient, wear rate and surface roughness. Variations of both the ratio of hard to soft layers (from 1:3 to 3:1) and thickness of individual layers (from 12.5nm to 75nm) were studied in detail. The stress of the film was sufficiently lowered (7.8GPa-2.4GPa) by the multilayer approach. The results indicated that although hardness has some correlations with the internal composition of the film, the reduced Young's modulus is largely not affected. Wear and frictional characterizations also showed that the multilayer was a good candidate for many mechanical applications.