The effect of substrate bias on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) study of nitrogen incorporated amorphous carbon (a-C:N) films embedded with nanoparticles deposited by filtered cathodic jet carbon arc technique is discussed. High resolution transmission electron microscope exhibited initially the amorphous structure but on closer examination the film was constituted of amorphous phase with the nanoparticle embedded in the amorphous matrix. X-ray diffraction study reveals dominantly an amorphous nature of the film. A straight forward method of deconvolution of XPS spectra has been used to evaluate the sp(3) and sp(2) contents present in these a-C: N films. The carbon (C 1s) peaks have been deconvoluted into four different peaks and nitrogen (N 1s) peaks have been deconvoluted into three different peaks which attribute to different bonding state between C, N and O. The full width at half maxima (FWHM) of C 1s peak, sp(3) content and sp(3)/sp(2) ratio of a-C: N films increase up to -150V substrate bias and beyond -150V substrate bias these parameters are found to decrease. Thus, the parameters evaluated are found to be dependent on the substrate bias which peaks at -150V substrate bias. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.