Production of Morphologically Smooth And Transparent Diamond Like Films for Wear Resistant Coatings

Damond is the best known material for wear resistance coatings. Even though several U.S. companies ahve successfully entered into various diamond thin film markets with CVD grown films, we have not yet seen widely used commercial wear resistance diamond coatings. The major problem for such applications is that one cannot achieve both economic and good wear resistance coatings with the currently predominant microwave CVD technique. In order to have economical competativeness, at least a factor of 10 times increase in the deposition rate thatn the current rate is required, such an increase in deposition rate while maintaining high film quality is not likely to be accomplished in near future using present methods. The direct C- ion beam deposition (IBD) process has demonstrated superior properties in adhesion, low friction surfaces, and film uniformity becuase the nucleation occurs uniformly across the surface due to the intrisic high energy of the C- ion beam (50-100 eV). The current large area ion sources also have difficulties in commercial applications because of its low deposition rate (~1um/hr). We proposed to develop an innovative IBD process which promises to deliver depostion rates up to 100 um/hr with our novel way of producing C- ion beams. We are proposing the development of a unique rectlinear C- ion beam source design which is capable of making deposition in any length with depostion rate of the order of 100um/hr for the beam area. In a test system we have demonstrated scratch resistant, morphologically smooth, and transpoarent diamong like films. In phase I, a 2: C- ion beam source will be developed and its successful production of DLC thin films will demonstrate the feasibility of the ion beam technique for various large scale war resistant coatings. In phase II, an industrial leve 10" C- IBD system will be developed.