Nickel/hydrogenated amorphous carbon (a-C:H) composite films have been deposited at room temperature on nickel coated (100)-oriented single crystal silicon substrates by combining sputter-deposition of metal and microwave plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition of carbon from argon-methane mixtures of various concentrations. The nickel target voltage was varied from - 600 to - 100 V. The films have been deposited on either grounded substrates or substrates biased to - 10 V. The dielectric properties of films were investigated as functions of the frequency and temperature varying from 0.1 Hz to 1 MHz and from -150°C to 175°C, respectively. Pure a-C:H films exhibited a dielectric constant of 2.8 at a frequency of 1 Hz. The dielectric constant at a frequency of 1 Hz was equal to approximately 300 for Ni/a-C:H composite films of 360 nm in thickness containing 20 at.% of nickel. The value of the dielectric constant of these composite films was observed to decrease from 300 to 200 as the frequency increased from 1 Hz to 100 kHz. The effect of the electric field on the permittivity of films is also discussed in the paper.

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