Intrinsic mechanical properties of diamond-like carbon thin films deposited by filtered cathodic vacuum arc

The mechanical properties of diamond like carbon thin films were investigated by using filtered cathodic vacuum arc with different substrates bias voltage. The effect of film thickness on the mechanical properties and to build an empirical relationship among the mechanical properties of thin films were also discussed. It was found that the intrinsic mechanical properties of the DLC thin films were derived by finite element analysis (FEA). The results show that the measured hardness could be used to represent its intrinsic value when the indentation depth was limited to 10% of the film thickness.