Stress evolution of tetrahedral amorphous carbon upon boron incorporation

This paper reports the evolutions of stress and mechanical properties of tetrahedral amorphous carbon films upon boron incorporation. A sharp stress relief and slight density reduction combined with moderate hardness and Young’s modulus were observed for the films with boron concentration up to 15% in the cathodes. Raman spectroscopy shows that a clustering of sp2 sites without a notable decrease in sp3 content occurs in the films, which is responsible for the mechanical behavior after boron incorporation.