Superior dielectric properties of epoxy-based photoresist thin film nanocomposites with carbon-coated Cu@C nanoparticles

Abstract

Abstract The microelectronics community has shown great interest for high-k percolative nanodielectric materials for their applications as integrated capacitors. This work highlights the manufacturing process of high-quality Metal Polymer Nanocomposites (MPCs) thin dielectric films with Cu@C nanoparticles into SU8™ negative photolithographic resist. Four capacitor formulations from 0.8%vol up to 3.0%vol of Cu@C functionalized with an insulating layer of Polystyrene Pyrene-terminated (PyrPS) were produced. These films, with a targeted thickness of 15 μm, were spin-coated onto p-doped silicon wafers. Raman spectroscopy demonstrated the nature of the carbon shell of the nanoparticles and its effectiveness in protecting the core from oxidation, while SEM-EDS highlighted the uniformity of the nanoparticle distribution in the resist. Broadband dielectric spectroscopy measured an enhancement of ε r to 124 with reasonable losses of 0.65 at 5 kHz for the (Cu@C)-PyrPS//SU8 3.0%vol nanocomposite. Through the use of Percolation Theory (PT) it was estimated the percolation threshold φ C in the vicinity of 3.2%vol. Furthermore, no electrical aging or dielectric breakdown was detected at low voltage. All the results show the potential use of Cu@C nanoparticles to achieve a high-quality high-k MPC photoresists for the implementation as integrated capacitors.