Fabrication and characterization of freestanding ultrathin diamond-like carbon targets for high-intensity laser applications

Here, we report the fabrication of diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films using pulsed laser deposition (PLD). PLD is a well-established technique for deposition of high-quality DLC thin films. Carbon tape target was ablated using a KrF (248 nm, 25 ns, 20 Hz) excimer laser to deposit DLC films on soap-coated substrates. A laser fluence between 8.5 and 14 J/cm² and a target to substrate distance of 10 cm was used. These films were then released from substrates to obtain freestanding DLC thin foils. Foil thicknesses from 20 to 200 nm were deposited using this technique to obtain freestanding targets of up to 1-inch square area. Typically, 100-nm-thick freestanding DLC films were characterized using different techniques such as AFM, XPS, and nano-indentation. AFM was used to obtain the film surface roughness of 9 nm rms of the released film. XPS was utilized to obtain 74 % sp², 23 % sp³, and 3 % C–O bond components. Nano-indentation was used to characterize the film hardness of 10 GPa and Young’s modulus of 110 GPa. Damage threshold properties of the DLC foils were studied (1,064 nm, 6 ns) and found to be 7 × 10¹⁰ W/cm² peak intensity for our best ultrathin DLC foils.