Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) containing a high fraction of sp3-bonds between carbon, also called tetrahedral amorphous carbon, have received extensive interest in the last 4 decades. This is due to a combination of superlative diamond-like properties, that are promoted by sp3-bonding between carbon. In addition, the films can be grown at near room temperature with reasonable growth rate (typically 50 nm/min) and are much cheaper to produce than rougher nano-crystalline diamond that typically requires substrate temperatures above 400 °C. Recently, NANOCARBON has made progress in decreasing the substrate temperature during diamond growth allowing the synthesis of nano-crystals on some polymers, but growth rate is presently too low for practical applications. Therefore DLC are competitive and cost-effective engineering materials with widespread potential applications, mainly as protective, anti-wear and anti-corrosion hard-coating in areas such as magnetic and optical storage devices, optical windows, medical implants and tools, and more recently, as anti-wear and anti-stick templates for nano-imprint lithography (NIL). It is also a potential candidate to be used as alternative material to silicon in micro and nano-electromechanical devices (NEMS / MEMS). NANOCARBON is researching on new applications for DLC such as new antibacterial and protective hard-coating.
Wettability of Hydrogenated Tetrahedral Amorphous Carbon, F. Piazza, G. Morell, Diamond and Related Materials, 18, 43 (2009).
Non-linear effects in collision cascades and high-energy shock waves during ta-C:H growth, F. Piazza,O. Resto, G. Morell, Journal of Applied Physics, 102, 013301 (2007).