2000 年 66 巻 12 号 p. 1958-1962
Nanoperiod multilayered films were deposited by controlling the time the substrate was positioned opposite each of the graphite and boron nitride semicircular targets. The wear depth of the 4-nm-period multilayered film is the lowest of all the sliding cycles; therefore, the wear resistance is clearly improved for a 4-nm-period layered film. To clarify the reason why the wear resistance of these multilayered films increases, the wear properties of the load conditions under which the wear increases atomically were evaluated by varying the number of sliding cycles. The wear depth increases with increasing the number of sliding cycles. The weardepth increase rate of the 2-, 4- and 8-nm-period layered films is almost zero at a 1, 2, and 4 nm wear depths, respectively. This wear depth corresponds to the thickness of the interface of each carbon nitride [C-N] and boron nitride [B-N] layer. At both edges of the wear scar, short steps of layered depth were observed in the half-thickness of each period-layered film. These results indicate that the wear resistance increased because of the prevention of fracture growth at the interface between B-N and C-N layers in the case of multilayered films. To realize single-layer processing, the processing properties dependencies of the load and sliding cycles were evaluated. Under suitable conditions, the processed depth corresponds to the depth of each C-N and B-N layer. As a practical application of this newly developed fabrication technique, three-dimensional nanometer-scale profiles, such as 300 nm × 300 nm square, lines and spaces with 100 nm periods and three-step grooves were fabricated.