Tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) films are deposited on single crystalline silicon with filtered cathodic vacuum arc by changing the magnetic filtering coil current from 5 A to 13 A. Visible Raman measurements show that the content of the sp3 hybridization decreases with magnetic filtering coil current increasing, and it deereased down to a minimum value as the coil currew increases up to 13 A. The surface morphology is investigated by atomic force microscope (AFM), and the surface roughness (RMS) of the film increases with the current of magnetic filtering coil increasing from 0.13 to 0.38, The friction test indicates that the minimum of friction coefficient is about 0.08 when the magnetic filtering coil current is 5 A. The friction coefficient increases when the magnetic filtering coil current is 7A. But the friction coefficient decreases again down to 0.1 with magnetic filtering coil current inereasing from 7 A to 13 A.