STRIPPING PROCESS FOR HARD CARBON COATINGS Russian patent published in 2017 - IPC C23G5/00 C23C16/02 

FIELD: chemistry.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to methods for reactive stripping of carbon layers from surface of a substrate. Substrate to be de-coated is placed on a substrate holder in a vacuum chamber, vacuum chamber is charged with at least one reactive gas supporting stripping of carbon in gaseous form, and a plasma discharge is initiated in vacuum chamber to support necessary chemical reaction or reactions to strip coated substrate, and de-coating proceeds in at least one step. Plasma discharge is produced as a low voltage direct current arc discharge, with discharge current between 20 A and 1,000 A and discharge voltage of at most 120 V. To remove at least part of carbon coating from substrate during at least one reactive de-coating step, reaction gas used is nitrogen-containing gas. Carbon coat together with carbon may contain non-metallic elements in form of hydrogen, boron, silicon and/or germanium.

EFFECT: providing industrially suitable stripping of carbon coating layers while preventing sputtering of substrate material.

10 cl, 3 dwg, 1 tbl, 7 ex