NITROGEN IMPLANTATION INTO GLASSY-CARBON AS AN ATTEMPT TO GROW A CARBON NITRIDE THIN-FILM

The current interest in carbon nitride comes from the recent theoretical prediction that this material could have superior structural, thermal and electronic properties to those of diamond. Over the last few years considerable efforts have been made in an attempt to grow thin films of the beta-C3N4 phase by employing various deposition techniques. In the present work, the possibility of carbon nitride formation by ion implantation of nitrogen into glassy carbon was investigated with particular attention to the effect of the implantation parameters and post-annealing processes. The distribution and bonding states of the implanted nitrogen as well as the composition and the structure of the modified layer have been studied by AES, XPS and Raman techniques. High-energy, up to 50 keV, and high-dose, up to 1 x 10(18) cm(-2), nitrogen ion implantations into glassy carbon were performed as an attempt to form a continuous carbon nitride layer. Low-energy (0.5 keV) nitrogen implantation was performed as a model study of possible chemical bond formation between nitrogen and carbon atoms. In this work we present experimental data demonstrating the predominant formation of an almost unpolarized carbon-nitrogen bond during hot nitrogen implantation. Such bonds are expected to be present in the elusive carbon nitride beta-phase.