The importance of non-local shadowing for the topography evolution of a-C:H films grown by toluene based plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition

摘要

The topography evolution of hydrogenated diamond-like carbon coatings deposited through toluene based capacitively coupled plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition has been studied experi_mentally and with continuum growth models. The experimentally observed mound formation and surpris_ingly large growth exponents β 0.9 ± 0.1 cannot be reproduced by familiar local stochastic differential equations that are successfully used for other thin film deposition techniques. Here we introduce a novel numerical approach to simulate a continuum growth model that takes into account non-local shadowing effects. We show that the major characteristics of the experimentally observed topography evolution can be accurately represented by this model.