Investigation of fluorinated amorphous carbon for low-k dielectric applications

This thesis describes the investigation of PECVD fluorinated amorphous carbon as a dielectric for multiple level metallization. Films have been deposited in a standard capacitively coupled plasma reactor, and the deposition parameters were varied to find the dependence of the optical and electrical properties on process conditions. It is found that, using acetylene and tetraflouromethane, thermally stable films can be made that have dielectric constants that will meet the criteria for next generation semiconductors. A metric is formed the allows the thermal stability to be determined optically, and the films have been subsequently patterned using a standard photoresist, indicating the possibility of implementing these materials using current VLSI processes.