Dresden 2003 – scientific programme

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DS: Dünne Schichten

DS 8: Harte Schichten II

DS 8.7: Talk

Monday, March 24, 2003, 16:45–17:00, GER/38

Analytical and functional characterization of ultrathin protective carbon films — •Ralph Ohr, Bernd Jacoby, Marc von Gradowski, Bernd Petereit, and Heinz Hilgers — IBM Speichersysteme GmbH, Hechtsheimer Str. 2, 55131 Mainz

Ultrathin carbon films are currently used as protective overcoats on hard disks and read-write heads. As an increase in areal storage density is related to a decrease of the magnetic spacing between head and disk, one major goal is to continuously reduce the carbon overcoat thickness. Attaining areal densities of 100 Gbits/in² implies the application of carbon films with thicknesses down to 2 nm.

This work presents the analytical and functional characterization of such ultrathin carbon based films deposited by different techniques, e. g. filtered high-current pulsed vacuum arc and mesh hollow cathode process. In order to extensively study the resulting film properties, a variety of analysis methods was employed. Particularly, the effect of decreasing film thickness on the structural and functional properties was of major interest. XRR has turned out to be an accurate tool for thickness and mass density determination of extremely thin films down to 2 nm. SIMS was used for sputter depth profiling and analyzing the chemical homogeneity of the films. The carbon bonding structure was studied by means of Raman Spectroscopy. Furthermore, XPS and AFM-Nanoscratching analysis was performed in order to obtain information on coverage quality and scratch resistance of the films, as these parameters are strongly related to the functional properties of the films, i. e. corrosion and wear resistivity.