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Diamond-Like Carbon Coatings

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Encyclopedia of Tribology

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Synonyms

Amorphous carbon coatings; DLC

Definition

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings are defined as a metastable form of amorphous carbon (a-C) or hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H) containing a significant fraction of sp3 bonds. Hydrogen-free DLCs with the highest density and sp3 content are called tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) and its hydrogenated analog ta-C:H. It is convenient to display the compositions of the various forms of amorphous C-H alloys on a ternary phase diagram, as shown in Fig. 1 (Ferrari and Robertson 2000; Robertson 2002). DLC coatings have a high mechanical hardness, chemical inertness, and optical transparency, and it is a wide band gap semiconductor. DLC coatings are widely used as protective coatings, for instance, on optical windows, magnetic storage disks, car parts, biomedical coatings, bearings and micro-electromechanical devices (MEMs) (Robertson 2002).

Diamond-Like Carbon Coatings, Fig. 1
figure 438

Ternary phase diagram of bonding in amorphous...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Precision and Non-Traditional Machining Technology of Ministry of Education, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, People’s Republic of China

    Dr. Zhenyu Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Prof. Jianbin Luo

Authors
  1. Dr. Zhenyu Zhang
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  2. Prof. Jianbin Luo
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Correspondence to Zhenyu Zhang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Center for Surface Engineering and Tribology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Q. Jane Wang

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Center for Surface Engineering and Tribology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Yip-Wah Chung

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Zhang, Z., Luo, J. (2013). Diamond-Like Carbon Coatings. In: Wang, Q.J., Chung, YW. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tribology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-92897-5_720

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