We report the synthesis of silica thin films with an unusual structure and unusual physical properties arising from the structure. The thin films were synthesized by sol-gel chemistry with a neutral surfactant as the structure-directing agent followed by controlled aging and calcination. The glazing angle X-ray diffraction, transmittance X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy data all indicated that these films had lamellar structures with modulated silica density with alternating high density layers and low density layers. The thicknesses of the high density and low density layers could be controlled to 4.8-7.5 nm and 1.7-2.5 nm, respectably, by adjusting the concentrations of reagents and catalysts in the coating sol-gel solutions. Nanoindentation measurement data on these films produced 2-3 GPa for the hardness and 20-40 GPa for the Young’s modulus, which are unusually high for pure silica films. Typical sol-gel silica films have 0.2-0.3 GPa of hardness and 5-10 GPa of Young’s modulus. More surprisingly, these films showed very low dielectric constants of 1.2-1.7. All these unusual physical properties, which are highly desirable for low-k materials for the next generation of semiconductor industry, can be explained with the lamellar structures in the nanometer length scale of our films. In this presentation, the formation mechanism and details of the characterization data of our silica films will be presented.

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