A fundamental study of the correlations between ion energy, substrate temperature, and plasma density with hydrogen content, percent sp2 bonding, optical gap, and refractive index of hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C) films is presented. A strong dependency between the ion energy used during deposition and the film’s microstructure is shown. Moreover, it is revealed that the optical properties of the a-C films are controlled by the concentration and size of sp2 clusters in the film.
Through N2 mixing in the source gas, room-temperature nitrogen doped polymeric-like a-C films were demonstrated for the first time. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy revealed an increase in the Fermi level of these films with increased nitrogen content.
A proof-of-concept a-C based transparent heat mirror (THM) was demonstrated. It was shown that a-C acts as an oxygen-free protective barrier and anti-reflective coating for Ag films in the THM, increasing the transmission in the visible region by 10-20%.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/24267 |
| Date | 06 April 2010 |
| Creators | Mahtani, Pratish |
| Contributors | Kherani, Nazir P., Zukotynski, Stefan |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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