Effect of the soft X-rays on highly hydrogenated diamond-like carbon films

Kanda, Kazuhiro*; Yokota, Kumiko*; Tagawa, Masahito*; Tode, Mayumi; Teraoka, Yuden; Matsui, Shinji*

Recently, the irradiation of soft X-ray synchrotron radiation (SR) to highly-hydrogenated diamond-like-carbon (H-DLC) films in vacuum results in the desorption of hydrogen and the increase of film density, hardness and refractive index. In this study, we investigated SR irradiation effects on the H-DLC with different hydrogen contents. The H-DLC thin films were deposited on an Si wafer with 200 nm thickness by an amplitude-modulated radio frequency plasma chemical vapor deposition method. The SR irradiation was carried out at NewSUBARU BL6. The SR has a continuous spectrum from IR to soft X-ray, which is lower than 1 keV. The hydrogen content dependence on SR dose was estimated using elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA) and Rutherford backscattering (RBS) techniques. The hydrogen content was kept constant in the low-hydrogenated DLC film, while that in the high-hydrogenated DLC film decreased exponentially with soft X-ray dose.