Electronic and bonding properties of Fe- and Ni based hydrogenated amorphous carbon thin films by X-ray absorption, valence-band photoemission and Raman spectroscopy

Electronic and bonding properties of Me-based hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-CH:Me, Me = Fe, Ni) thin films have been studied by X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES), valence-band photoemission (VB-PES) and Raman spectroscopy. Raman and XANES results show enhancement of the content of sp3-rich diamond-like carbon (DLC) by doping with Fe and Ni. The VB-PES spectrum of a-CH:Fe shows emergence of a prominent feature due to states of sp3-bonded clusters, indicating that a-CH:Fe induced enhancement of DLC structure. The nano-indentation measurement reveals that a-CH:Fe has a greatly enhanced hardness, while electrical resistance measurement shows that a-CH:Me reduces resistivity.

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► Electronic structure of metal based DLC (a-CH:Me, Me = Fe, Ni) thin films have been studied.
► a-CH: Fe shows more DLC than a-CH:Ni.
► PL is decreases with metal alloying DLC.