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The effects of low temperature and pressure on the fracture behaviors of organosilicate thin films

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Abstract

A novel load–displacement sensing instrument has been designed and fabricated to characterize the fracture properties of brittle thin films at low temperature (approximately −30 °C) and pressure (1.6e-4 Pa) environments. In this study, the instrument was used to investigate the effects of harsh environments on the fracture behaviors of organosilicate glass (OSG) and silicon carbonitride (SiCN) thin films under four-point bend loading. Experimental results showed that the fracture strengths of film stacks are the highest when the environment contains a very low water molecule concentration. This condition can be achieved by purging the testing chamber with pure nitrogen or reducing the chamber pressure to less than 1 Pa. In contrast, cracks propagated readily along OSG/SiCN interfaces when experiments were performed in deionized water. The effects of low temperature (approximately −30 °C) and pressure on thin film fracture were also studied, and the results demonstrated that there is no observed degradation of the OSG fracture properties. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) technique was used to identify the chemical composition of the fracture surfaces.

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Acknowledgments

T.Y. Tsui thanks the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery, NSERC Research Tools and Instruments, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation for the financial support of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Soheil Barakat, Pearl Lee-Sullivan & Ting Y. Tsui

  2. Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lexington, Massachusetts, 02420-9108, USA

    Steven A. Vitale

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  1. Soheil Barakat
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  2. Pearl Lee-Sullivan
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  4. Ting Y. Tsui
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Correspondence to Ting Y. Tsui.

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Barakat, S., Lee-Sullivan, P., Vitale, S.A. et al. The effects of low temperature and pressure on the fracture behaviors of organosilicate thin films. Journal of Materials Research 26, 2524–2532 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2011.253

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