Diamond-Like Carbon DLC

A new form of carbon coating is now available which is neither diamond nor graphite and is known as diamond-like carbon (DLC).bl DLC can be considered as a metastable carbon produced as a thin coating with a broad range of structure and composition.l b[42]... 

Figure 16.7. Transmission and reflection of germaninm coated with diamond-like carbon (DLC).

Kimock, F. M. and Knapp, B. J., Commercial Applications of Ion Beam Deposited Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) Coatings," Surf. Coat. Technol, Vol. 56,1993,pp. 273-279. 

After lapping, the sliders will be cleaned, and then a passivation film of diamond-like carbon (DLC) will be deposited on the surfaces of sliders through chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to protect the pole area from chemical-physical corrosion and electrostatic discharge attack. Corrosion in pole areas will result in loss of read/write functions. A corrosion test was taken to examine the ability of the sliders polished by different slurries as shown in Table 6. It can be seen that the MRR change rate of the sliders polished by UFD slurry is much less than that polished by the slurry T5qre III, that is, the capability of anti-corrosion of the former is much better than that of the latter. 

Mechanical properties of diamond-like carbon (DLC)thin films... 

The next point to realize is that the best emitter is a metal. Many forms of carbon initially studied are semiconductors or even insulators, including nanodiamond [8-11] and diamond-like carbon (DLC) [12-13,4]. Combine this with local field enhancement means that there is never uniform emission from a flat carbon surface, it emits from local regions of field enhancement, such as grain boundaries [8-11] or conductive tracks burnt across the film in a forming process akin to electrical breakdown [13]. Any conductive track is near-metallic and is able to form an internal tip, which provides the field enhancement within the solid state [4]. Figure 13.2 shows the equipoten-tials around an internal tip due to grain boundaries or tracks inside a less conductive region. 

One of such unique coatings is Diamond Like Carbon (DLC). The conventional synthesis of synthetic diamonds requires extremely high temperatures and pressures. By PECVD, Diamond Like Carbon is created under mild conditions by the decomposition of methane in H2/CH4 mixture. The applications of DLC are numerous coatings for cutting tools, optical fibres, electronic devices for reading magnetic tapes, or even protective coatings in chemical reactors. 

Sheeja, D. Tay, B.K. Krishnan, S.M. Nung, L.N. Tribological characterization of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings sliding against DLC coatings. Diamond Relat. Mater. 2003,12, 1389-1395. 

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