Photoelectric effects of nanostructured amorphous carbon films

In this work, the photoelectric properties of nanostructured amorphous hydrogenated carbon films was studied; these films are a variation of diamond-like carbon films. For this study, carbon films with different compositions were deposited and their electrical and optical proprieties were analyzed. These films were deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering using a pure graphite target and methane, nitrogen, carbon tetrafluorine and argon as processing gases. The amorphous carbon films are naturally nanostructured and show amount of optical proprieties as photoemission in the visible range and photoelectric effects. To enhance these effects in this work, the selective etching of the carbon films was promoted, and a nanopores and nanoholes was obtained. These defects show characteristics of potential gaps and modify the carbon films properties. Plasma etching performs the generation of the nanopores and nanoholes in the carbon films. The characteristics of these films were observed by photoluminescence analyze, optical absorbance, electro-optic analyzes. In this study, the development of the new structure for optical analyses of the nanoporous carbon films was necessary. For this, an auto-aligned test structure based in interdigital electrodes was developed.