Electrical conductivity of nitride carbon films with different nitrogen content

The electrical conductivity of nitride carbon (DLC: N) films has been studied. It is found that the electrical conductivity of the deposited films increases slowly with increasing nitrogen content, however, it decreases after the nitrogen content in the film reaches a certain value of 12.8 at%. Thermal treatment results show that the electrical conductivity of the lowly nitrogen doped DLC film increases rapidly, while that of the heavily doped film decreases after annealing at 300 °C for 30 min. Raman and XPS spectra results show that when the nitrogen content in the films reaches a certain value, there appears nonconductive phases. Therefore the electrical conductivity of the heavily doped films decreases. FTIR spectra analysis results show that the nitrogen atom as an impurity center undergoes an ‘activation’ process during the thermal treatment, which leads to the increase of the electrical conductivity. Therefore, the nitrogen in these two kinds of films has different effects on the electrical conductivity.