Tetrahedral amorphous-carbon thin films for silicon-on-insulator application

The application of a silicon-on-insulator substrate in a high-power integrated circuit is limited by the self-heating effect, caused by the poor thermal conductivity of the buried SiO2. We introduce tetrahedral amorphous-carbon thin films, formed by the filtered arc deposition method, as an alteration. We investigated the surface morphology, microstructure, and electrical properties of these films. The films deposited under a substrate bias of −200 V displayed outstanding surface topography (low surface roughness with the Rrms value under 0.5 nm) and excellent electrical property (breakdown field of 4.7 MV/cm). The film has a high content of sp3 bonds of carbon (87%) and low content of oxygen (<2%).