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Medium-Range Order Structures of Amorphous Diamond-Like Carbon Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2011

Xidong Chen
Affiliation:
Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439
J. Murray Gibson
Affiliation:
Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439
John Sullivan
Affiliation:
Nanostructure and Semiconductor Physics Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185–1421
Tom Friedmann
Affiliation:
Nanostructure and Semiconductor Physics Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185–1421
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Abstract

In this paper, we have studied medium-range order structures in amorphous diamond-like carbon films with fluctuation microscopy. Medium-range order structures are quantified by a specific form of a general four-body correlation. We name this function as a pair-pair alignment correlation function. By analyzing speckle dark-field images taken over different areas as a function of momentum transfer in reciprocal space, we measured the pair-pair alignment correlation function for both thermally annealed samples and unannealed samples. We have found that thermal annealing introduces medium-range order in amorphous diamond-like carbon films, causing more pairs of atoms to be aligned. These results agree with density-functional simulations. Larger-scale simulations will be needed to fully understand our experimental results.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2001

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References

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