Moisture diffusion in poltimide films in integrated circuits
This paper reports the use of planar aluminum-PI-aluminum capacitors, in which the variation of low frequency dielectric permittivity is shown to be proportional to absorbed moisture, to carry out in-situ studies of moisture uptake and diffusion in PMDA-ODA device-grade polyimide films. It is found that the equilibrium amount of moisture uptake depends on ambient relative humidity in the temperature range 20-80‡C, and that the diffusion kinetics obey a Fickian model with a diffusion coefficient in the range 3-5 x 10-9 cm2 /sec at room temperature. The diffusion coefficient is temperature dependent, with an activation energy of 0.32-0.34 eV, and is weakly dependent on absorbed moisture at fixed temperature. An asymmetry is observed between absorption and desorption kinetics which correlates with the moisture-dependent diffusion coefficient.