Nitrogen doped diamond-like carbon (N-DLC) thin films were prepared on n-Si substrates using a filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposition method. Square wave anodic stripping voltammetry (SWASV) was used to trace Pb and Cu in a neutral KCl solution with pH 7. Stripping voltammograms of Pb and Cu were analyzed in terms of metal concentration, deposition time and deposition potential. The SWASV resu...

To resist wear, biomedical components require coatings that are exceptionally hard, have low friction, and are bioinert. Diamond-like carbon has been shown to provide this capability and to prevent leaching of metallic ions into the body. There are many ways to deposit such coatings from carbonaceous precursors, and some offer the means to incorporate other elements such as nitrogen, titanium, ...

We describe the recent developments on the diamond-like carbon (DLC) over-coated Microstrip Gas Chambers made on drawn glass substrates. MSGC surface coating with thin DLC layer of stable and controlled resistivity was proposed to overcome the limitation of detector operation due to surface charging-up under avalanches. This brings also advantages for the detector manufacturing technology. The ...

The environment-dependent interaction potential is a transferable empirical potential for carbon which is well suited for studying disordered systems. Ab initio data are used to motivate and parametrize the functional form, which includes environment-dependence in the pair and triple terms, and a generalized aspherical coordination describing dihedral rotation and nonbonded π -repulsion. Simula...

Carbon thin films are very important as protective coatings for a wide range of applications such as magnetic storage devices. The key parameter of interest is the sp fraction, since it controls the mechanical properties of the film. Visible Raman 3 spectroscopy is a very popular technique to determine the carbon bonding. However, the visible Raman spectra mainly depend on the configuration and...

We study theoretically the equilibrium structure, as well as the response under external load, of characteristic carbon-based materials. The materials considered include diamond, amorphous carbon (a-C), “amorphous diamond” and nanocomposite amorphous carbon (na-C). A universal bulk-modulus versus density curve is obeyed by all structures we consider. We calculate the dependence of elastic const...

The formation process of sp hybridized carbon networks (i.e., diamond-like structures) in hydrogenated diamond-like carbon (DLC) films has been studied with the use of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. A recent study [Y. Murakami, S. Horiguchi, and S. Hamaguchi, Phys. Rev. E. (2010) in press] has shown that a sufficient supply of hydrogen in the form of hydrocarbon species CH3 as deposition ...

A novel quantitative nano+micro-tribometer with integrated SPM and optical microscope imaging has been developed to characterize numerous physical and mechanical properties of liquid and solid thin films and coatings, with in-situ monitoring their changes during micro and nano indentation, scratching, reciprocating, rotating and other tribology tests. Both the materials properties and surface t...

Wear tests were carried out on different DLC coatings under lubricated and dry slip-rolling friction in a Twin-Disc Testing rig. The analysis of Acoustic Emission (AE) provided an easy and comfortable tool for monitoring the wear life of DLC coatings. A DLC coating in-service was indicated by the appearance of no or just single AE events due to single damages (crack, small spallings, etc.) to t...