Influence of annealing on the hydrogen bonding and the microstructure of diamondlike and polymerlike hydrogenated amorphous carbon films

Abstract

The influence of hydrogen incorporation on the microstructure of hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H) films has been studied in detail by applying several complementary methods, i.e., elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA), hydrogen evolution, and infrared absorption measurements, to two series of samples prepared by two different techniques, respectively representative of diamondlike and polymerlike a-C:H. The analysis of the changes of the infrared vibrational spectra over a large frequency range upon annealing at increasing temperatures up to 600 °C allowed us to get insights into both the C-H and C-C bonding modifications.