The fullerene-like nanostructure hydrogenated carbon films with super-low friction

摘要

Carbon-based thin films have been subject of extensive research over the last decade due to their excellent properties, such as low friction coefficient, chemical inertness, infrared transparency, and high hardness. The hardness of carbon-based films is usually linked to the presence of sp3 C-C bonds and these films are called diamond-like carbon. Recently, it was shown that although containing a high number of sp2 bonds, some nonhydrogenated carbon and carbon nitride films synthesized by different physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques exhibit high hardness and extreme elasticity concurrently due to a "fullerene-like" microstructure. Here, we reported that fullerene-like nanostructure hydrogenated carbon films in which curved graphite particles and multishelled carbon nanoparticles, consisting of prolate and tapered spheroids, embedded in an amorphous matrix can be fabricated by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) pulsed glow discharge. Our studies clearly show that the unique structure bestows the film excellent mechanical properties, i.e. super elasticity and high hardness, more