Carbon films of amorphous and oriented graphitic structure from fullerene ion beam deposition

Energetic fullerene deposition has been performed with an intense, highly ionized beam in the kiloelectron-volt energy range to form carbon thin films. The deposited material is amorphic and essentially free of hydrogen that is bonded to carbon. The films show graphitic nanocrystallites embedded in amorphous carbon which are preferentially oriented with the c-axis parallel to the substrate surface. With increasing substrate temperature, the size of the crystallites increases together with a decrease in the percentage of sp[sup 3]-bonded carbon. There is evidence that the primary deposition product is mainly sp[sup 3]-bonded carbon which then relaxes to form the oriented, graphitic nanocrystallites. The method of fullerene ion beam deposition has been used to form a dense amorphous carbon film on a single-crystalline fullerite film, where the crystalline quality of the fullerite film is only insignificantly affected by the deposition process. 38 refs., 8 figs.