Friction measurements have been performed on microcrystalline, ultrananocrystalline, and diamond-like carbon DLC films with natural diamond counterfaces in the temperature range of 8 K to room temperature. All films exhibit low friction 0.1 in air at room temperature. In ultrahigh vacuum, microcrystalline diamond quickly wears into a high friction state 0.6 , which is independent of temperature...

Mineralogical structures of carbon phases within the ureilite North West Africa 4742, a recent find, are investigated at various scales by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), Raman microspectrometry and X-ray diffraction. Ureilites are the most carbon-rich of all meteorites, containing up to 6 wt.% carbon. Diamond, graphite and so-called “amorphous carbon” are typically de...

X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) and valence-band photoemission spectroscopy (VB-PES) were used to elucidate the electronic and mechanical properties of diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films deposited by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition method at various bias voltages (V(b)) using a C(2)H(2) vapour precursor in an Ar(+) atmosphere. The increase of V(b) is found to incre...

We have developed capacitively-transduced nanomechanical resonators using sp(2)-rich diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films as conducting membranes. The electrically conducting DLC films were grown by physical vapor deposition at a temperature of 500 °C. Characterizing the resonant response, we find a larger than expected frequency tuning that we attribute to the membrane being buckled upwards, a...

This paper reviews the work carried out over the past few years on the application of diamond-like carbon (DLC) materials to electronic devices. The use of such materials is still in its infancy due to their high defect state density and associated low mobilities. To date, the major effort in the electronic field has been in their attempted use as cold cathode field emitters where their low thr...

The ultrasmoothness of diamond-like carbon coatings is explained by an atomistic/continuum multiscale model. At the atomic scale, carbon ion impacts induce downhill currents in the top layer of a growing film. At the continuum scale, these currents cause a rapid smoothing of initially rough substrates by erosion of hills into neighboring hollows. The predicted surface evolution is in excellent ...

Diamond-like carbon films form a critical protective layer on magnetic hard disks and their reading heads. The ultimate limit to storage density is the super-paramagnetic limit, where the thermal energy is able to overcome the coercive energy of the magnetic bit. Perpendicular recording should allow storage densities up to ;1 Tbityinch . This requires the read head to approach 2 closer to the m...

The Jahn-Teller effect used semi-theoretically to analyse UV-visible spectra of the diamond like-carbon films on Si substrates. By deconvolution of UV-visible absorption spectra of the typical films, different absorption lines found. For each sample, six lines which were related to V • by Jahn-Teller effect are distinguished. Our theoretical approach based on distortion of the V • as the conseq...

A new material containing macroscopic quantities of onion-like carbon (OLC) particles is produced by heat treatment of ultra-disperse diamond (UDD) powder (2-6 nm). Annealing products (characterized by high-resolution electron microscopy) are presented by: (a) quasi-spherical particles with closed concentric graphite shells, (b ) polyhedron particles with closed shells, (c) elongated particles ...