A Low Dielectric Study on Hybrid Plasma-Polymer Thin Films of Different Ratio Between Toluene and TEOS

Abstract

Organic-inorganic hybrid co-polymer thin films were deposited on silicon(100) substrates under the several ratio of TEOS (tetraethoxysilane) against toluene by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) method. Toluene and TEOS were utilized as organic and inorganic precursors each, and hydrogen and argon were also used as a bubbler and carrier gases, respectively. In order to compare the difference of the electrical and the mechanical properties of the plasma polymerized thin films, we grew the hybrid co-polymer thin films under the conditions of various ratio between toluene and TEOS with fixed RF (radio frequency using 13.56 MHz) powers at 30 W. The as-grown polymerized thin films were in first analyzed by FT-IR and XPS. The result of FT-IR showed that the co-polymer thin films were polymerized with fragmented each precursor. Also, XPS results showed the chemical species and binding energies of each species. Si 2p core-level spectra from the hybrid polymer thin film showed the status of Si oxidation number. Impedance analyzer was utilized for the measurements of I-V curves and capacitance values. Also, the thin films were analyzed for hardness and Young's modulus by nano-indenter.

Mechanical properties of plasma polymer films: a review

“…Different precursors can also be plasma polymerized together. The evaluation of the mechanical properties of films from such copolymerization is more reported for mixtures of organosilicons and hydrocarbons [42][43][44][45]. As expected, that kind of approach does not seem to result in films with completely different mechanical properties from the single monomeric films, but rather in-between them.…”

Characterization of Low-k Dielectric SiCOH Films Deposited with Decamethylcyclopentasiloxane and Cyclohexane

“…Various siloxane and hydrocarbon molecules were tested for low-k dielectric films. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] In this work decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (DMCPSO, C 10 H 30 O 5 Si 5 was selected as a silicon oxide precursor and cyclohexane (C 6 H 12 as a hydrocarbon precursor. These molecules can form nanoscale molecular pores due to the molecular ring structures resulting in dielectric constant reduction.…”