X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-Si_xC_1-x:H) prepared by the plasma CVD method

Abstract

The XPS of a-SixC1-x:H films prepared by the plasma CVD method from a mixture of silane and methane gases were measured. The separation of the XPS spectra into several peaks revealed the nature of the chemical bonds of silicon and carbon atoms. The coordination of the carbon atom was diamond-like and fourfold in silicon-rich films, while the graphitic threefold coordination was dominant in carbon-rich films. The effect of dilution gas was also investigated by using argon and hydrogen as dilution gases. Films prepared from hydrogen-diluted gas contained more carbon atoms with fourfold coordination than those prepared from argon-diluted gas.

Band gap control of hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide films prepared by hot-wire chemical vapor deposition

“…It is well known that, in plasma-enhanced CVD (PE-CVD), an increase in methane gas flow rate results in a decrease in a deposition rate of a-Si 1Àx C x :H thin films [8], because bond energy of a methane molecule is higher than that of a silane molecule and the concentration of silane molecules in a gas phase decreases with increasing the methane gas flow rate. The result in this study is different from this report and will be discussed in the next section.…”

A study of B4C‐SiC composite for self‐lubrication

“…Figures 4-6 illustrated XPS analyses of B 1s , Si 2p , and C 1s of the surfaces of BS0, BS100 and BS1200. The B 1s binding energy of 188.5 eV (Figure 4) can be assigned to B 4 C, 33 and the Si 2p binding energy of 100.3 eV (Figure 4) can be assigned to SiC 34 . As seen in Figure 4, the deconvoluted C 1s spectra exhibited two peaks at the binding energies of 283.0 and 283.9 eV, which can be assigned to B 4 C 35 and SiC, 36 respectively.…”

“…Combined with Figures 3B and 3C, the B content in BS1200 is significantly lower than that in BS1000, suggesting that the content of H 3 BO 3 on the surface of BS1200 is very low, which may be the reason that no H 3 BO 3 can be detected on the surface of BS1200 by Raman (Figure 2A). The deconvoluted Si 2p spectra of BS1200 displayed two peaks at binding energies of 100.4 and 103.6 eV (Figure 6), which can be assigned to SiC 34 and SiO 2 , 39 respectively. The deconvoluted C 1s spectra of BS1200 exhibited two peaks at binding energies of 283.7 and 284.5 eV (Figure 6), which can be assigned to SiC 36 and free carbon, 40 respectively.…”

SiCN coatings prepared by PACVD from TMS-NH3-Ar system on steel

“…For the former, this could be assigned to nitrogen bonded to carbon,whose occurence goes through a maximum in the range f = 0.1, 0.25. Cls peaks are correlatively larger,but the interpretation is more complex due to the various bondings in which carbon may be present: C=O as contaminant, C-Si, C-H, C-C as in graphite or diamond (14). Therefore, in front of this complexity the peak fitting must be considered with care.…”