Abstract
Amorphous carbon film (a-C:H) applications, such as hard disks, require films with nanometer thicknesses. In an indentation test, the obtained hardness values of these films are affected by substrates. On the indentation tests, we studied the effect of substrate hardness on films less than 200 nm in thickness. a-C:H and Si doped a-C:H (a-C:Si:H) films were deposited by electron cyclotron resonance plasma chemical vapor deposition onto aluminum (Al) and silicon (Si) substrates. The film thicknesses were approximately 140 nm. The hardnesses of the a-C:H film and substrates were obtained using a high-resolution indentation tester (pico-dentor) with a Vickers tip whose depth resolution was 0.04 nm. Maximum indentation loads were varied from 0.01 to 0.5 mN. The Martens hardnesses of films on the Al and Si substrates were 600 and 7000 N/mm2, respectively. On the a-C:Si:H film deposited on the Al substrate, the hardnesses increased from 1600 to 3900 N/mm2 with decreasing indentation load. The hardnesses of the films deposited on the Si substrate decreased from 5300 to 3500 N/mm2 when the maximum indentation loads were reduced. The effect of the substrates increased with the maximum load increasing. From these findings, the actual hardness value was determined to be 3600 N/mm2. These results indicate that the high-resolution indentation test achieved hardness estimations for nanometer-thick films with certain hardnesses.
