ABSTRACTWe have reported the synthesis of carbon nitride thin films with evidence of formation of carbon nanodomes over a range of substrate temperature from 50 °C to 550 °C. An RF magnetron sputtering system was used for depositing carbon nitride films. The size of the nanodomes can be controlled by deposition temperature and increases from 40–80 nm at room temperature to 200–400 nm at high temperature (550 °C). Microstructural characterization was performed by AFM. Electrical characterization shows that these films have conductive behaviour with a resistivity depending on the size of the nanodomes. Resistivity values of 20 mΩ-cm were found for nanodomes of size 40–80 nm falling to 6 m?-cm for nanodomes of size 200–400 nm. Nanoindentation results show that the hardness and Young's modulus of these films are in the range from 9–22 GPa and 100–168 GPa respectively and these values decrease as the size of the nanodomes increases. GXRD results confirm that a crystalline graphitic carbon nitride structure has formed.
