Correlation between the dielectric constant and porosity of nanoporous silica thin films deposited by the gas evaporation technique

Nanoporous silica thin films with low dielectric constants were deposited by gas evaporation of SiO2 nanoparticles in an argon atmosphere. With increasing gas pressure during the evaporation, the dielectric constant decreases, while the porosity increases. The correlation between the dielectric constant and porosity is well modeled by a serial connection of two capacitors, one with air and the other with SiO2 as the dielectric medium. This suggests that the dielectric constant of the nanoporous silica thin film using the gas evaporation technique is more effectively lowered by forming "uniformly" distributed voids of closed gaps than those of the nanoporous silica films with pores extending from the back to front surface. Therefore, the former nanoporous silica thin film requires less porosity to obtain a low dielectric constant and is regarded as an ideal low-k material. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.