To my knowledge, both materials can be deposited by plasma assisted CVD from generally the same precursors. Only the deposition conditions (like the way of plasma excitation and frequency and gas composition) differ. Are these completely different materials or can they be substituted? How about conductivity/doping? Can anyone direct me to valuable reading about the topic?
They're quite different materials, although can have some similar applications.
DLC is amorphous, diamond is crystalline. The term DLC is often used quite loosely and covers quite a wide range of materials with substantially different properties.
For example, there are hydrogenated and non-hydrogenated DLCs, and the bonding can range from being quite graphitic in character (high sp2 content) to being more genuinely 'diamond-like' with around 90% sp3.
DLCs generally are not very conductive and can be thought of as wide band gap semiconductors, and it is possible to dope with metals, metalloids and nonmetals to tune the properties for certain applications.
A good review (although 10 years old now) is:
J. Robertson, "Diamond-like amorphous carbon", Mat. Sci. Eng. R, 37:129-281 (2002)
Both are C so what is meaning of doping please clarify. In best in my opinion the best one can do with NCD and DLC is that make a composite material which may have altogether different property.
Thanks, Ross and Volker. I see, there is plenty information regarding DLC, but not so much about NCD. I googled a nice presentation http://www.conferences.unimelb.edu.au/icndst-8/Presentations/6-2.pdf , but the NCD deposition technology seems to be proprietary (patented). My interest is unique semiconductor properties of these materials combined with great chemical stability and adhesion to silicon oxide and nitride.
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