Organic and inorganic hybrid-polymer thin films by PECVD method and characterization of their electrical and optical properties

Organic-inorganic hybrid polymer-like thin films have been deposited on glass and silicon substrates by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method using single molecular precursors of the organic-inorganic hybrid polymers. Methylcyclohexane and tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) were utilized as organic and inorganic precursors, and hydrogen and Ar (argon) were used as bubbler and carrier gases, respectively. In order to compare the difference between the optical, electrical, and mechanical properties of the plasma polymerized thin films, we grew the hybrid polymer-like thin films under the conditions of various radio frequency (RF; using 13.56 MHz) powers in the range of 20-50 W with the annealing temperature of grown thin films in the range 200-500 °C. The as-grown polymerized thin films were in first analyzed by FT-IR, C-V, ellipsometry, and nanoindentation. The result of FT-IR showed that the plasma polymerized thin films have highly cross-linked density with increasing RF power and annealing temperature. Impedance analyzer was utilized for the measurements of C-V curves. From the electrical property measurements, the lowest dielectric constant was obtained to be 2.22.