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Ultrathin Pyrolytic Carbon Films on a Magnetic Substrate

We report the growth of ultrathin pyrolytic carbon (PyC) films on nickel substrate by using chemical vapor deposition at 1000 °C under methane ambience. We find that the ultra-fast cooling is crucial for PyC film uniformity by controlling the segregation of carbon on nickel. We characterize the in-plane crystal size of PyC film by using Raman spectroscopy. The Raman peaks at ~1354 cm-1 and ~1584 cm-1 wavenumbers are used to extract the D and G bands. The corresponding peak intensities are then used in an excitation energy dependent equation to calculate the in-plane crystal size. Using Raman area mapping, the mean value of in-plane crystal size over an area of 100 μm ${\times}$ 100 μm is about 22.9 nm with a standard deviation of about 2.4 nm.