Abstract: In order to investigate the thermal stability of the tetrahedral amorphous carbon(ta-C) films fabricated by filtered cathodic arc deposition technique, ta-C films were annealed in ambient air for 3h. The annealing temperature was 200℃, 400℃ and
500℃, respectively. XPS and Raman spectroscope were employed to characterize the changes of the microstructure of the films. The results show that the XPS C1s peaks and the Raman peaks of the samples annealed at 400℃ or below change little. When the annealing temperature
is 500℃, the shape of the XPS C1_s peak doesn’t change too; the Raman I_D/I_G increases, the G-peak position doesn’t change and
the shape of Raman peak becomes more symmetry. This reveals that the sizes of the graphite clusters in the films increase and no obvious graphitization occurs during annealing process. All these indicate that the ta-C film fabricated by filtered cathodic vacuum arc technique has excellent thermal stability due to its hydrogen free and dense structure. Besides, parts of the films along the edge of the samples is evaporated by oxidation when the annealing temperature is up to 500℃.

Key words: thermal stability, filtered cathodic vacuum arc deposition, ta-C film, microstructure