Low temperature internal friction of diamond-like carbon films

We have studied the internal friction of amorphous diamond-like carbon films prepared by pulsed-laser deposition from 0.4 to 300 K. The low temperature internal friction below 10 K is dominated by the atomic tunneling states for amorphous solids, which is a measure of structure disorder. We have tried to vary the content of sp3 carbon atoms versus sp2 ones by changing laser fleunce, by doping with N and Ar, and by annealing at 500 °C for 20 min. Our results show that the internal friction varies about one order of magnitude from 2×10−5 to 2×10−4, and its value is higher with higher sp3 content when the film quality is generally considered superior. However, it is known that as-deposited diamond-like carbon films with high sp3 content are heavily stressed. Annealing and doping are used to release the stress. We conclude that in addition to tetrahedral bonding, low stress is also important in reducing structure disorder associated with the low energy tunneling states in amorphous solids.