Surface characteristics of parylene-C films in an inductively coupled O-2/CF4 gas plasma

Abstract

In this article, we report the results obtained from a study carried out on the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching of poly-monochloro-para-xylylene (parylene-C) thin films using an O-2/CF4 gas mixture. The effects of adding CF4 to the O-2 plasma on the etch rates were investigated. As the CF4 gas fraction increases up to approximately 16%, the polymer etch rate increases in the range of 277-373 nm/min. In this work, the atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis indicated that the surface roughness was reduced by the addition of CF4 to the O-2 plasma. Contact angle measurements showed that the surface energy decreases with increasing CF4 fraction. At the same time. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) demonstrated the increase in the relative F atomic content on the surface. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.