Implantation-Induced Modifications to Diamond-Related Materials

Abstract

Two families of man-made materials which are closely related to diamond have been developed recently, and the ion-induced effects relevant to these are mentioned here. The first, which was already grown ~20 years ago [9.1], are amorphous-hydrogenated carbon (a—C:H) (or, as sometimes called, diamondlike carbon, DLC) films and the second are the recently-developed man-made thin diamond films. Both of these are grown in the form of thin coatings from a plasma which contains a mixture of carbon and hydrogen ions. In the following, ion implantation studies in DLC are briefly reviewed. As for implantation effects in diamond films, hardly any data exist on these, probably because of the novelty of the material. However, from the available data [9.2] it seems that diamond films respond to ion implantation exactly like diamond single crystals do, at least as reflected in ion-induced changes in the electrical conductivity and in the Raman spectra.