Hard and conductive carbon nanodome thin films deposited by rf magnetron sputtering

This Letter reports the synthesis of hard and conductive carbon nanodome thin films over a range of substrate temperature from 50 to 550 °C. The size of the nanodomes increases from 40–80 nm at room temperature to 200–400 nm at high temperature (550 °C). Electrical characterization shows that these films have conductive behavior with a resistivity depending on the size of the nanodomes. Resistivity values of 19 mΩ cm were found for nanodomes of size 40–80 nm, falling to 6 mΩ cm for nanodomes of size 200–400 nm. Nanoindentation results show that the hardness and Young’s modulus of these films are in the range from 9–22 GPa and 100–168 GPa, respectively, and these values decrease as the size of the nanodomes increases. Glancing angle x-ray diffraction results confirm that a crystalline graphitic carbon nitride structure has formed.