Ti/Al co-doping induced residual stress reduction and bond structure evolution of amorphous carbon films: An experimental and ab initio study

Amorphous carbon (a-C) films co-doped by two metals exhibit a desirable combination of mechanical and tribological properties for wider applications. Nevertheless, the structural evolution of metal co-doped a-C films from the atomic and electronic scales is a critical pre-requisite to illustrate the intrinsic mechanism of residual stress reduction. Herein, we first fabricated the Ti/Al co-doped a-C films with different concentrations by a hybrid ion beam system. When the co-doped Ti/Al concentrations were

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