Galloway, Heather C.Gibson, William Thomas2020-05-162020-05-162006-05Gibson, W. T. (2006). Self assembling porous low-k dielectric thin films (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University-San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas.https://hdl.handle.net/10877/9936Due to the increases in processing speeds and miniaturization demands placed on integrated circuits the traditional on chip insulator of silicon oxide K ~ 3.9 allows crosstalk between interconnects. This crosstalk is detrimental to device performance, reducing the effective performance speed. One approach to reducing the crosstalk is to reduce the parasitic capacitance between the interconnects. To this end, we attempt to produce self-assembling thin films of polystyrene (PS) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), to be used as a porous low-1< dielectric, on amorphous silicon carbide on silicon (SiC) and on silicon oxide on silicon (SiO2). In the process, we optimized the deposition procedures for a 55% PS random copolymer (RCP). Also, we compared ultrasonic cleaning in an acetone bath with standard clean 1 and 2 (SC-1, SC-2) for SiC, SiO2, and amorphous silicon carbon nitride on silicon (SiCN). This was a preliminary step in surface preparation prior to deposition of the RCP. We identified an effective method of verifying the successful deposition of an RCP using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). We also successfully cast a diblock copolymer (DBC) of P(S-b-MMA) with a PS content of 50.8% that produced lamellar structures. Analysis of the cleaning comparison, RCP and DBC deposition were accomplished using FTIR and atomic force microscopy (AFM) using both contact and non-contact imaging.Text93 pages1 file (.pdf)endielectric filmscopolymersthin filmsThesis