Electrical Properties of Amorphous Carbon Thin Films Prepared from Natural Precursor of Camphor

Amorphous carbon thin films have been deposited on silicon substrates at different deposition temperatures ranging from 650-800 deg C. In this work, a natural product, camphor (C10H16O) is used as a carbon precursor. Use of camphor as a precursor for depositing carbon thin film could be more favorable than any other precursors because its single molecule contains both forms of carbon, one sp2 and 9 sp3 carbon atoms. In other words, camphor had both trihedral (sp2) and tetrahedral (sp3) hybridized bonds while diamond and graphite have completely 100% of sp3 and sp2 bonded in their lattice respectively. The electrical properties have been studied using IV measurement. These a-C films are also characterized using UV-Vis Spectrophotometer. It was found that increasing deposition temperature had the most influence on the a-C thin films properties.