Carbon-based nanostructured materials via cluster beam deposition: A multi-technique investigation

The use of clusters as elemental building blocks can open new routes towards the creation of a new class of architectures and nanostructures. We report the synthesis of nanocrystalline carbon thin films produced by depositing supersonic clusters. An optimized version of a pulsed arc cluster ion source (PACIS) was utilized for the production of intense and stable ionized and neutral cluster supersonic beams. Laser photoionization and mass spectrometric techniques have been used to characterize the source, the cluster mass distribution and energy. A set of techniques was then applied to evaluate the structural and electronic properties of the thus-grown nanocrystalline carbon films encompassing Raman and C 1s X-ray photoemission spectroscopies (XPS).