Glassy carbon (GC) is a chemically stable form of fully sp 2-bonded carbon with locally ordered domains. GC is the intermediate material between graphite and diamond combining various properties such as high temperature resistance, hardness, good electrical conductivity, low density, low gases and liquids permeability and excellent resistance to a wide range of aggressive chemical environments. These characteristics make it a very promising material for many applications, but unfortunately it is not widely used because of the high temperatures required for its synthesis. In this work, synthesis of glassy carbon thin films by means of laser ablation of carbon targets under vacuum or in gaseous helium, followed by a nanosecond laser irradiation of the deposited films, is presented. In particular, it is demonstrated that the amorphous structure of a thin film can be efficiently modified to the one of glassy carbon film by nanosecond UV laser irradiation. This method is valuable to prepare thin films similar to commercial glassy carbon with a completely different route which does not require the application of temperature beyond 1000 o C which is not compatible with the silicon substrate for example. This opens for glassy carbon the way to microengineering applications (mechanics, electronics.. .). A particular attention is paid to characterize the vitreous carbon. In the literature, the vitreous nature of a carbon layers is often highlighted on the basis of Raman spectroscopy measurements. However, as the Raman spectrum of glassy carbon is similar to that of pyro-carbon, multiwall carbon nanotubes or functional graphene, this technique is not sufficient to safely characterize a carbonaceous material with a high degree of allotropy. To clear up any doubts, additional characterization methods, such as X-ray spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, are discussed here.

C 2 F graphite fluoride has a unique mutable structure when subjected to external applied pressure. In the present study, we examine C 2 F using X-ray Raman scattering (XRS) up to 6.5 GPa coupled with theoretical simulations. Using the XRS technique, we follow the in situ high-pressure evolution of the energy loss corresponding to the C and F K-edge. Significant variations occur at 2.9 GPa, remain up to 6.5 GPa, and persist at ambient conditions after decompression. The permanent changes are related to an increased planarity of the graphitic layers and a modulation of the fluorine configuration. The all-electron density of a C 2 F-sp 3 slab obtained from the DFT simulation and the quantum theory of atoms in molecules reveals the appearance of bond-critical points between in-plane and out-of-plane F−F, suggesting an increasingly ionic character of the structure under biaxial isotropic strain. Pressure can be used as an alternative to chemical synthesis for tuning C−F bonding and metastabilizing new intercalated fluorine compounds with potentially improved electrochemical properties.

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