Opto-electronic Polymer Thin Films Deposited by Glow Discharge Plasma Technique: A Review

The technology of opto-electronic polymer thin film deposition has advanceddramatically during the past 20 years. This advancement was driven primarily bythe need for new products and devices in the electronics and optical industries.Increasingly complex tasks are performed by computers, requiring more and morememory capacity as well as faster and faster processing speeds. This leads to aconstant need to develop high performance opto-electronic thin film materials, whichcan be used for the preparation of more highly integrated microchips. The rapidprogress in solid-state electronic devices would not have been possible without thedevelopment of new thin film deposition processes and superior thin film qualities.Among the broad variety of accessible alternatives, plasma organic polymer film hasbeen one of the most widely studied materials due to its outstanding and promisingmechanical and physicochemical properties. In this review, the new opto-electronicpolymer thin films deposited by glow discharge plasma technique in recent years isintroduced and discussed in combination with our research results. In particular, wefocus our attention on the opto-electronic properties of these polymer thin films, suchas dielectric property, electric conductivity, non-linear optical property,photo(electro)luminescent property and optical band gap. The correspondingdeposition methods of the opto-electronic polymer thin films including plasmapolymerization deposition, plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition are alsoreviewed within their respective sections. In summarizing the review, the development,potential applications and future directions of opto-electronic polymer thin filmsdeposited by glow discharge plasma technique are discussed, especially the filmproperties required for applications in opto-electronic devices.