Structure-Designable Formation-Method of Super Low-k SiOC Film (k=2.2) by Neutral-Beam-Enhanced-CVD
Ar neutral beam enhanced chemical vapor deposition can control the dielectric constant and film modulus of low-k SiOC deposited on Si substrates precisely because it avoids precursor dissociation due to electron collisions and UV photons in plasma. Optimizing the ratio between Si-O and Si-(CH3)x as well as the proportions of linear, network, and cage Si-O structures by changing the precursor, we obtained a k of 2.2 and a reasonable modulus by using either dimethyl diethoxy silane or dimethyl dimethoxy silane as a precursor.
Low dielectric constant insulator formed by downstream plasma CVD at room temperature using TMS/O2
We present an insulator with a dielectric constant lower than 3.0, thermal stability up to 500° C and good gap-filling characteristics. This insulator was formed by downstream plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at room temperature using tetra-methylsilane (TMS)/O2 gases. It contained a large amount of water in the as-deposited state. Annealing at 350° C resulted in a decrease in the water content of the insulator, and the insulator did not absorb water after the annealing. The film is constructed from Si–O and Si–CH3 bonds, which produce a low dielectric constant and high thermal stability.
Reid on Hypotheses and the Ether; A Reassessment
In recent years historians of science have come to see that Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man had a profound impact on the development of British methodological thought in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Larry Laudan has argued that Reid was “the first major British philosopher to take Newton’s opinions on induction, causality, and hypotheses seriously”; and that Reid was thereby instrumental in changing the character of British methodological discourse in the Enlightenment.(1) Geoffrey Cantor has examined in detail the influence of Reid’s critique of ether theories and hypotheses in the Essays on leading protagonists in the nineteenth-century debates surrounding the wave theory of light,(2) and Richard Olson has traced the origins of the scientific style of British physics in the Victorian period to the writings of Reid and other Common Sense philosophers. (3) As well as delineating Reid’s influence, Laudan, Cantor, and Olson have attempted to identify the problems to which he addressed himself in articulating his methodology, and they have analysed with some care the internal structure of his methodological views. Thanks to the work of these historians, therefore, we have a fairly comprehensive picture of Reid’s methodology and its fortunes in the nineteenth century.