The application of a sufficiently high negative substrate bias, during the growth of tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C), is usually associated with low sp(3) bonding configuration and stressed films. However, in an effort to understand and utilize the higher pseudo thermo dynamical conditions during the film growth, at high negative substrate bias (-300 V), reported here is a study on ta-C films grown under different hydrogen and nitrogen concentration. As grown ta-C films were studied under different negative substrate bias conditions. The variation of the sp(3) content and sp(3)/sp(2) ratio in the ta-C films exhibits a trend similar to those reported in literature, with a subtle variation in this report being the substrate bias voltage, which was observed to be around -200 V, for obtaining the highest sp(3) (80%) bonding and sp(3)/sp(2) (3.95) ratio. The hydrogen and nitrogen incorporated ta-C films studied, at a bias of -300 V, show an increase ill sp(3) (87-91%) bonding and sp(3)/sp(2) (7-10) ratio in the range of studies reported. The inference is drawn on the basis of the set of data obtained from measurements carried out using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray induced Auger electron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy of as grown and hydrogen and nitrogen incorporated ta-C films deposited using an S bend filtered cathodic vacuum arc system. The study indicates the possibility of further tailoring ta-C film properties and also extending capabilities of the cathodic arc system for developing carbon based films for electronics and tribological applications. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.