Chapter 27
Nanofilms and the Emerging Nanotechnology Ejembi J . Onah
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Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
Nanofilms or nanofiber of fluorine containing polymers because of their unique properties including: Low permittivity, low friction, thermal stability, high resistance to chemical attack especially oxidation hold a central position in the emerging nanotechnology. Important areas where fluorine containing polymer films hold a lot of promise are: Biomedical application, resist technology in photo and radiation lithographies as well as insulators or dielectrics in an emerging"nanoelectronics". Fluorine containing polymer specifically fluoropolyimide, fluoropolyamic acid, and fluoropolyacrylates have been synthesized. The polymers are soluble in wide solvents. Their LangmuirBlodgett (LB) monolayers (polymer as film on the water surface or single molecules arranged on the substrate) and their ultrathin films (monolayers deposited on the substrate as thin films in nanometer range) have been fabricated. Techniques like A F M , surface plasmon resonance (SPR), and dielectric spectroscopy have been used to obtain the surface morphology, film thickness and dielectric constant. The dielectric constant of 1.5 is the lowest so far reported according to my knowledge.
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© 2006 American Chemical Society
Reneker and Fong; Polymeric Nanofibers ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2006.
385 The concept of nanofilms or nanofibers is used to describe films where the characteristic dimensions are less than about 1,000 nanometers. These films find applications in many areas in the emerging nanotechnology especially for biomedical applications or nanoelectronics as dielectrics or insulator films. As postulated by Von Neuman; the emerging nanolectronics will produce computers that are made to execute more complicated work. To achieve this role at a greater speed and less cost is the challenge to nanoelectronics in the emerging nanotechnology. To do this the computer has to be made faster, complex and smaller; the miniaturization idea by Richard Feyman. These ideas gave birth to Nanotechnology by Drexler . 1
Downloaded by MONASH UNIV on April 12, 2016 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: February 23, 2006 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2006-0918.ch027
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Where is the position of nanofilms or nanofiber in all these? Microelectronics now transforming to nanoelectronics has a dominant influence in our lives. This industrial revolution was originally driven by the need for very small and lightweight electronic circuits for military and aerospace applications. With the development of, first, the transistor and later, the integrated circuit (IC), microelectronics has now grown into a multibillion dollar industry, and its application is ubiquitous. Device miniaturization has brought us from small-scale (SSI), medium-scale (MSI), and very large-scale integration (VLSI) with 10 or more components per chip. The next stage may be very very large-scale integration ( W L S I ) . In the transformation from microelectronics to nanoelectronics, research has been going intensively in all areas of microelectronics to provide for ever higher performance (speed) and density at very low cost. Active foci include the scaling of devices and the search for novel materials and processing technologies for interconnects and packaging in lithography and dielectrics. The development of new insulators for interconnects and packaging is one approach to increase the speed. Compatibility with thin-film fabrication techniques, low-dielectric losses, good adhesion to a variety of substrate materials, and thermal, mechanical and chemical stability have made polymer materials attractive choices as the interlayer dielectric (ILD) and intermetal dielectric (IMD). In its simplest form, the multilevel interconnect structure comprises a metal pattern on a substrate, a polymer layer on top with metalized vials, and a second metal pattern on top of the polymer. As operating frequencies of electronic devices enter the gigahertz range and as the dimensions of electronic devices approach the submicron level called nanotechnology, dielectric media with low dielectric constants (
