Carbon Materials Laboratory

One of the main areas of research in the laboratory is to obtain well-known and new carbon materials. To obtain carbon films, methods of gas-phase chemical deposition (GPHO) are used using installations that implement modifications of this method during activation of a gaseous medium (a mixture of methane and hydrogen) in a DC discharge (plasma-chemical modification of GPHO) and thermal activation (the "hot thread" method): - Installation for plasma chemical deposition. In this method, the activation of a mixture of methane and hydrogen is performed by a direct current discharge. Deposition is performed on flat conductive substrates on which thin carbon films of various structures are formed. One of the modifications of this method makes it possible to produce deposition on non-conductive (dielectric) substrates using an additional electrode. - Hot filament deposition plant (Seki Technotron, 650 HF CVD). In this method, the activation of a mixture of methane and hydrogen occurs as a result of contact with tungsten filaments heated by a current passed through them. This installation allows to produce various carbon films not only on flat substrates, but also on complex 3D objects, as well as to produce carbon materials doped with boron. Due to the relatively low concentration of carbon in the activated gas medium, the deposition rate using these GFCF methods is relatively low, which makes it possible to achieve a high degree of control over the deposition process and obtain carbon films of various types in a controlled manner: micro- and nano-crystalline diamond films, poly- and mono-crystalline graphite films, mono- and multilayer graphene, carbon nanotube films, etc. As an example, the figure shows images obtained using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) for carbon films of various types obtained using plasma chemical GFCS.