Electron energy loss spectroscopy of amorphous carbon nitride

Electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) has been used to determine the C and N bonding states in two types of amorphous C-N film produced using two different deposition methods. Although both types of film are found to possess a significant sp(2)-bonded component, this component is reduced in the films deposited by a filtered cathodic are (FCA), leading to a higher film density. For films deposited using electron beam evaporation of graphite combined with an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma, inconsistencies between X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and EELS measurements of the N content suggest that N is concentrated near the film surface, indicating that the material possesses more than one structural phase. These results suggest that the FCA technique may be more suitable for producing dense a-CxNy films in which N is homogeneously distributed throughout the film.