Materials and Manufacturing Processing; Special Issue on Hard Carbon Films

Laser processing of polycrystalline diamond and amorphous carbon films is shown to be a promising technology for micropatterning of these materials in electronics and other applications. By using excimer lasers, holes and pits have been formed in 10-60 micrometers thick diamond films by physical etching with ablation rates of up to 300 nmpulse. The channels of micrometer scale width were created in diamond-like carbon films on silicon by chemical etching in oxygen by the scanning with a cw Ar laser beam. At laser powers below the etching threshold, a transformation of amorphous carbon to graphitic carbon allows the formation of conductive lines of different geometry in dielectric carbon layers.