Abstract: Disclosed is vapor deposited BARC and method of preparing tunable and removable antireflective coatings based on amorphous carbon films. These films can be hydrogenated, fluorinated, nitrogenated carbon films. Such films have an index of refraction and an extinction coefficient tunable from about 1.4 to about 2.1 and from about 0.1 to about 0.6, respectively, at UV and DUV wavelengths, in particular 365, 248 and 193 nm. Moreover, the films produced by the present invention can be deposited over device topography with high conformality, and they are etchable by oxygen and/or a fluoride ion etch process. Because of their unique properties, these films can be used to form a tunable and removable antireflective coating at UV and DUV wavelengths to produce near zero reflectance at the resist/BARC coating interface. This BARC greatly improves performance of semiconductor chips.