Surface characteristics of parylene-C films in an inductively coupled O2/CF4 gas plasma

In this article, we report the results obtained from a study carried out on the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching of poly-monochloro-para-xylylene (parylene-C) thin films using an O2/CF4 gas mixture. The effects of adding CF4 to the O2 plasma on the etch rates were investigated. As the CF4 gas fraction increases up to approximately 16%, the polymer etch rate increases in the range of 277–373 nm/min. In this work, the atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis indicated that the surface roughness was reduced by the addition of CF4 to the O2 plasma. Contact angle measurements showed that the surface energy decreases with increasing CF4 fraction. At the same time, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) demonstrated the increase in the relative F atomic content on the surface.