A study of diamond like carbon/chromium films deposited by microwave plasma activated chemical vapor deposition

Abstract Since metal interlayer improves the adhesion, a sequential method of deposition of diamond like carbon (DLC) on Cr has been tried. The Cr interlayer and DLC grown sequentially on Si (100) by pulsed DC magnetron sputtering and microwave plasma CVD (MPCVD), respectively, which resulted in intermixing of DLC and Cr on the upper part of Cr interlayer. The intermixed layer contains nanocrystals of CrC which most likely contributes to formation of a relatively hard (18 GPa) DLC with high modulus (up to 320 GPa) and improved adhesion.