As the speed of electronic devices becomes faster and feature size of integrated circuits continues to become smaller, it is required to replace the conventional dielectric material such as silicon-dioxide (k ~ 4) with the materials which have much lo...
As the speed of electronic devices becomes faster and feature size of integrated circuits continues to become smaller, it is required to replace the conventional dielectric material such as silicon-dioxide (k ~ 4) with the materials which have much lower dielectric constant. To decrease the dielectric constant, there are representative two ways. One way is to synthesis new materials having non-polar structure such as methyl (-CH3) side chain in their molecular structure. Another way is introducing air voids (k = 1) to materials. However, low dielectric materials prepared by these two ways suffer from low mechanical properties due to lower crosslinking density and there is a lot of doubts about applying these materials to real integration process. Recently, many efforts to modify the materials using plasma or UV treatment are being made to solve this problem by making the materials tough. In this study, wavelengthes of 254 and 352 nm UV lamps were used to increase mechanical properties by modifying silicon bonding structures like suboxide, network, cage structures. FT-IR spectrum analysis was used to confirm the changes in silicon bonding structure after UV treatment. In case of 352 nm UV lamp, there wasn't significant effect because of the lower energy of 352 nm UV lamp. Howerver, using high energy 254 nm UV lamp resulted in increased ratio of mechanically tough network structures. Thin films were exposed to 254 nm UV lamp for increasing treatment time (5, 10, 30 min) and mechanical properties were increased with increasing treatment time. The largest enhancement was achieved when the thin film was treated for 5 min and small enhancements were achievied when the treatment time increased further. UV treatment of thin films showed over 15% increase in E and thin film with 60% of porogen loading resulted in k of 2.18, elastic modulus of 11.13.