Stress and structural relaxation in amorphous hydrogenated carbon films

The correlation between the residual stress and the atomic-bond structure has been investigated in detail in hydrogenated amorphous films (a-C:H). The relaxation process was studied in relation with the Raman characteristics evolution and the induced metric distortions during growth. The analysis of the Raman data shows that the metric distortions alone cannot explain the stress relaxation in the deposited films. The creation of some topological defects, such as odd rings, is required to explain both the Raman features behavior and the structural relaxation in the a-C:H samples.