Effect of ECR-assisted microwave plasma nitriding treatment on the microstructure characteristics of FCVA deposited ultra-thin ta-C films for high-density magnetic storage applications

There are higher technical requirements for protecting layer of magnetic heads and disks used in future high-density storage fields. In this paper, ultra-thin (2 nm thickness) tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) films were firstly prepared by filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) method, then a series of nitriding treatments were performed with nitrogen plasma generated using electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) microwave source. Here it highlighted the influence of nitrogen flow and applied substrate bias voltage on the structural characteristics of ta-C films during the plasma nitriding process. The chemical compositions, element depth distribution profiles, physical structures and bonding configurations of plasma-nitrided ta-C films were investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and UV–vis Raman spectroscopy. The experimental results show that the carbon nitride compounds (CNx) are formed in nitrogenated ta-C films in which the N content and its depth distribution depends on bias voltage to large extent rather than N2 flow. The N content of nitrogenated ta-C films can reach 16 at.% for a substrate bias of −300 V and a N2 flow of 90 sccm. With increasing nitrogen content, there is less G peak dispersion and more ordering of structure. Furthermore, appropriate nitriding treatment (substrate bias: −100 V, N2 flow: 150 sccm) can greatly increase the fraction of sp3 and sp3C–N bonds, but the values begin to fall when the N content is above 9.8 at.%. All these indicate that suitable ECR-assisted microwave plasma nitriding is a potential modification method to obtain ultra-thin ta-C films with higher sp3 and sp3C–N fractions for high-density magnetic storage applications.