Study of Thin Polymeric Film Deposited by the PECVD Process for use at 193 nm

A plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) reactor was used to deposit thin polymeric films with high absorption at 193 nm. The reactor is suitable to deposit uniform and pinhole free thin polymeric films with conformality over 95%. Conformal films with thickness as low as 200 Å have been deposited on silicon, glass, and quartz substrates, as well as silicon oxide, silicon nitrate, and aluminum films. Deposited films had variations in thickness of 3 to 5% over an area of 8 inches in diameter. Thin films deposited on silicon substrates under varying levels of RF power were scanned using the AFM technique. The measurements show increasing surface roughness of the scanned samples as the RF power increases.

Keywords:

• polymeric films
• plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition

5 Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) SBIR Phase II contract number DASG60‐01‐C‐0065. The authors thank Dianne Cazeca for helping with the manuscript preparation. This paper was originally presented in INTERFACE 2002 poster section, The Arch Chemicals Microlithography Symposium.