Silicon Carbide Films as Protective and Optical Coatings

KRUPA M.M.

Institute of Magnetism of National Academy of Science of Ukraine,

03143 Kiev, Vernadsky's bul.,36,

UKRAINE

Abstract: - The paper presents the results of experimental studies of amorphous silicon carbide films

as a material for applying protective coatings, as well as for creating a submicron structure on the

Received: March 16, 2024. Revised: August 9, 2024. Accepted: September 14, 2024. Published: November 14, 2024.

1. Introduction

Silicon carbide films are considered mainly as a

promising material for use in solar cells and in the

development of new microelectronic elements based

on silicon. The best results in such developments are

obtained when using single-crystal SiC films, which

complicates the technology of their manufacture.

However, the high technical characteristics of SiC,

optical coatings. An important fact is that SiC films

sublimate at high temperatures, bypassing the melt

stage, which allows them to be used for the

manufacture of flat optical elements with a given

submicron structure using powerful laser radiation.

This paper presents the results of experimental

studies of amorphous silicon carbide films as a

material for applying protective coatings, as well as

for creating submicron.

beam sputtering on glass substrates or on fused

quartz substrates. A feature of our technology is that

as sputtering targets we used highly dispersed

which each SiC crystallite was enriched with

silicon. Enrichment with silicon (about 5%) was

carried out at the stage of obtaining the silicon

carbide compound. The technology we used allowed

us to obtain amorphous films with high strength and

hardness indicators with good adhesion of the film

range

n>2.5.

films as a protective coating, we used the

accelerated aging method [1]. This method is based

on the statement that any degradation process

depends on temperature and is described by a

certain activation potential. To assess the

effectiveness of SiC films as a protective coating,

we measured the degradation times of amorphous

interact extremely strongly with oxygen atoms,

which causes strong oxidation of TbFe films in air.

It is known [2, 3] that a change in the relative

concentration of interacting Tb and Fe atoms in

amorphous ferrimagnetic TbFe films causes a

methods.

We measured the change in the coercive force Hc

of the TbFe film after several hours of annealing at

determined the degradation time

room temperature based on the following

expressions

where Н0 is the coercive force of the film at

When developing a laser technology for forming

a submicron structure on the surface of large-area

optical parts, two tasks need to be solved. The first

of them is related to the development of a

technological process for forming such a submicron

structure under the action of laser radiation, and the

second is related to the development of a system for

moving a laser beam with nanoscale accuracy. We

studied the process of forming a submicron phase

structure in amorphous SiC films using a special

along the x coordinate, 4 – micromotor with a

microlens, 5 – substrate with film, 6 – linear

displacement motor along the y coordinate, 7 – laser

radiation of a continuous single-mode argon laser 1

with a power of 6 W, which is modulated by high-

frequency acousto-optic modulators 2 at a frequency

of 230 MHz and focused on the substrate with a film

by a microlens using an autofocus micromotor 4.

Continuous or stepwise movement of the laser beam

C, the value of

which confirms the high technical performance of

the protective coating based on the amorphous

the beam T(r0) greater than the film sublimation

temperature

. To estimate the minimum intensity

, (2)

and

conductivity for the film material and optical

substrate,

are the dielectric constant,

thickness and thermal conductivity coefficient of the

film. In the continuous mode of movement of the

laser beam focusing point, the duration of the laser

pulse can be replaced by the time of passage of the

focusing point of the transverse size of the focused

beam d0.

contrast pattern in tracks formed in amorphous SiC

films of different thicknesses by an argon laser: 1 –

h=20 nm, 2 – h=60 nm, 3 – h=100 nm, 4 – h=40

nm.

cutting can be even smaller, but the phase contrast

of the picture decreases. In thicker films, the depth

of the cut in the film increases, which leads to an

the optical substrate, the phase contrast would

increase by two and a half times due to the large

targets enriched with silicon allows us to obtain

high-quality amorphous silicon carbide films. Such

films not only have high mechanical, thermal and

chemical stability and good thermal conductivity,

but are also transparent in a wide range of the

visible spectrum and have a large refractive index.

In addition, SiC films sublimate at high

temperatures, bypassing the melt stage, which

makes them a promising material in laser surface

treatment technology. All this allows us to state that

the manufacturing process.

The results of our studies of the protective

characteristics of amorphous SiC films showed that

they provide more effective protection of TbFe

films from oxidation compared to SiO2 films. Using

a special stand that provided submicron precision

movement of a sharply focused laser beam along

two coordinates, a regular submicron structure with

a minimum size of an individual element of several

hundred nanometers was formed in amorphous SiC

References:

Appl. Phys. Vol. 50, 1979, pp, 2871-2882.

https://doi.org/ 10.1063/1.326204.

[3] M. Komori, T. Nukata, K. Tsutsumi. C.

Inokyti, I. Sakyrai. Amorphous TbFe Films for

Magnetic Printing with Laser Writing. IEEE

Trans. Magnetic, Vol 20, 1984, pp. 1042-1044.

https://doi.org/ 10.1109/TMAG.1984.1063319

[4] W. W. Duley. Laser Processing and

Analysis of Materials Processing and Analysis

of Materials. Springer Science & Business

[5] Laser and electron beam processing of