Characterization of amorphous and nanocrystalline carbon films

Diamond-like carbon: state of the art

High power pulsed magnetron sputtering (HPPMS) is an emerging technology that has gained substantial interest among academics and industrials alike. HPPMS, also known as HIPIMS (high power impulse ...

High power pulsed magnetron sputtering: A review on scientific and engineering state of the art

Modern computer microprocessor chips are marvels of engineering complexity. For the current 45 nm technology node, there may be nearly a billion transistors on a chip barely 1 cm2 and more than 10 000 m of wiring connecting and powering these devices distributed over 9-10 wiring levels. This represents quite an advance from the first INTEL 4004B microprocessor chip introduced in 1971 with 10 μm minimum dimensions and 2 300 transistors on the chip! It has been disclosed that advanced microprocessor chips at the 32 nm node will have more than 2 billion transistors.1 For instance, Figure 1 shows a sectional 3D image of a 90 nm IBM microprocessor, containing several hundred million integrated devices and 10 levels of interconnect wiring, designated as the back-end-of-the-line (BEOL). Since the invention of microprocessors, the number of active devices on a chip has been exponentially increasing, approximately doubling every two years. This trend was first described in 1965 by Gordon Moore,2 although the original discussion suggested doubling the number of devices every year, and the phenomenon became popularly known as Moore’s Law. This progress has proven remarkably resilient and has persisted for more than 50 years. The enabler that has permitted these advances is known as scaling, that is, the reduction of minimum device dimensions by lithographic advances (photoresists, tooling, and process integration optimization) by ∼30% for each device generation.3 It allowed more active devices to be incorporated in a given area and improved the operating characteristics of the individual transistors. It should be emphasized that the earlier improvements in chip performance were achieved with very few changes in the materials used in the construction of the chips themselves. The increase of performance with scaling * Corresponding author. E-mail: gdubois@us.ibm.com. † IBM Almaden Research Center. ‡ Stanford University. Willi Volksen received his B.S. in Chemistry (magna cum laude) from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1972 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry/Polymer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, in 1975. He then joined the research group of Prof. Harry Gray/Dr. Alan Rembaum at the California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow and upon completion of the one-year appointment joined Dr. Rembaum at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Senior Chemist in 1976. In 1977 Dr. Volksen joined the IBM Research Division at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, where he is an active research staff member in the Advanced Materials Group of the Science and Technology function.

Low dielectric constant materials.

Diamond-like carbon — present status

Interlayers for diamond deposition on tool materials

The deposition of superhard amorphous carbon films demands high energies of all impinging particles for film formation by subplantation instead of condensation. Such conditions may be realized by vacuum arc discharge. By using pulsed arc currents and laser controlled ignition (Laser-Arc) the usual problems in arc ablation of carbon targets have been overcome. In this way, smooth and very hard films with hardness in the superhard range between 40 and 80 GPa have been prepared with high deposition rates comparable to conventional industrial arc deposition. Due to the high ion energies, low deposition temperatures are possible without reducing the adherence. They are even necessary for the formation of the diamond bonds by avoiding relaxation towards a graphitic structure. Hence, materials besides metals such as steels or aluminum, temperature-sensitive materials such as polymers have been successfully coated with these hard layers.

H.-J. Scheibe

Papers

Interlayers for diamond deposition on tool materials

Deposition of superhard amorphous carbon films by pulsed vacuum arc deposition

Non-destructive characterization of mechanical and structural properties of amorphous diamond-like carbon films

Preparation and wear behaviour of woodworking tools coated with superhard layers

Optical and photoemission studies of DLC films prepared with a systematic variation of the sp3:sp2 composition