Nonuniformity of the dielectric response of amorphous carbon layers: correlation with atomic composition and structure

The potentially wide range of optical constants obtained from differently deposited carbon layers with diverse atomic structure has been the subject of an intensive research in recent years. The optical properties are well known to depend strongly on the level of contamination and the degree of atomic order in the layer material. The purpose of the present paper is to sum up the results of our investigations of optical and electrical properties of numerous differently deposited carbon layers and to relate them to the results of measurements of mass density, the atomic composition of the layers and electron diffraction measurements. In particular, estimation formulas are provided to relate the IR refractive index to the mass density and the hydrogen concentration of the layers. In addition, special attention is paid to the exponential absorption region.