Pulsed laser deposition of nano-glassy carbon films

Carbon films have been deposited at room temperature on (1 0 0) Si substrates by pulsed laser ablation (PLA) from a highly oriented pyrolitic graphite source. Changing the laser power density from 8.5 to 19 MW mm−2 and using various ambient atmospheres (helium, argon from 0.6 Pa to 2 kPa), nano-sized cluster-assembled films were obtained. Scanning electron microscopy shows that the film morphology, changes with increasing ambient gas pressure. We observed in the sequence: dense columns, node-like morphology, platelets (only in argon) and an open dendritic structure. By atomic force microscopy, on representative films, we evaluated the size distribution and relative abundancy of aggregates of carbon clusters, as well as film roughness. Raman spectroscopy shows that all the films are sp2 coordinated, structurally disordered and belong to the family of carbon nano-glasses. The estimated film coherence length gives an average size of about 5 nm for the agglomerated carbon clusters in the films. The average number of carbon atoms per cluster depends on ambient gas pressure, but is nearly independent of laser intensity.