EFFECTS OF DUAL SPECTRAL SOURCES ON THE CURING OF POLYIMIDE FILMS BY RAPID ISOTHERMAL PROCESSING

There are fundamental differences between conventional furnace process ing (CFP) and rapid isothermal processing (RIP). The radiation spectru m of a conventional furnace consists of photons in the infrared and lo nger wavelength regions, whereas the spectrum of the incoherent light sources used in RIP consists of some UV, visible, and infrared photons . As compared to CFP, the photophysical and photochemical effects asso ciated with RIP provide the capability of lower temperature processing . However, a further reduction in processing temperature can be achiev ed by the use of vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) and UV light sources in conj unction with a single spectral source RIP. We provide experimental res ults for the dual spectral source curing of polyimide dielectric films . Our findings indicate that simultaneous exposure of polyimide sample s to both VUV and conventional RIP sources during processing cured the polyimide more rapidly and at lower temperatures than did single spec tral source RIP alone. These results may be of great importance for th e RIP of the future generation of semiconductor devices.