Dielectric Performance of Porous Methyl Silsesquioxane/Triacetyl-β-Cyclodextrin Thin Films

Porous methyl silsesquioxane thin films with low dielectric constant are successfully synthesized by means of the sol-gel spin-coating method. The precursor solutions are prepared by properly mixing the polymer as a matrix with different contents of triacetyl-β-cyclodextrin (TABCD) as a porogen. The chemical structure, dielectric constants, optical constants and void fraction are investigated by the ellipsometric porosimetry, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and other methods. Influences of TABCD and methyl trimethoxysilane (MTMS) on the dielectric properties are discussed. For those samples with higher porogen loading, orientation and electronic polarizations are lower in low and high frequency regions, respectively, because of a considerably smaller number of polar molecules. The FTIR results suggest that high R value (molar ratio of H2O to MTMS) is more advantageous for formation of cage structures and the cage/network structural ratio increases with the increasing R value.