Processing of polymer-ceramic nanocomposites for system-on-package applications

This work focuses on studying and optimizing the dispersion of nano-sized ceramic particles in PGMEA, which is the solvent for the selected host polymer. High solids loading leads to entrapment of porosity in the microstructure, which lowers the effective dielectric constant of the films. The amount of solvent in the suspension and the spin coating speed were found to impact the dielectric constant of high filler content nanocomposites. The interplay between the rheological properties of the suspension and processing parameters such as solvent content and coating speed and its impact on the dielectric properties of the film is discussed. Porosity of thin film composites was measured for the first time to study the impact of these processing parameters. Powders of different particle sizes were mixed to obtain bimodal particle size distribution to increase the packing density of the composite. Packing density was improved by modifying the dispersion methodology and a nanocomposite of dielectric constant as high as 135 was obtained