Three diisocyanate units having different linearity and planarity on the basis of the arrangement of constituent aromatic rings are used to synthesize three polyurethanes (PUs) and the effects of the molecular structure of the diisocyanate units on phase separated morphologies of PUs have been studied. The linear and planar diisocyanate unit allows good packing of the hard segments in the hard domain by extensive intersegmental hydrogen bonding, and it forms a well ordered, long hard domain. However, the nonlinear and noncoplanar diisocyanate unit shows a lesser degree of hydrogen bonding in the short hard domain. Strong preferential orientation of the rigid/long hard domains inside a macroscopic grain boundary has been observed with the polarizing optical microscope especially for the PU based on the rigid diisocyanate. It was concluded that the molecular structure of the diisocyanate unit in PU plays an important role in determining the interchain interaction, the detailed phase‐separated domain structure, and local domain orientation in each grain boundary. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys, 2011

Spin-on dielectric (SOD) is widely used in semiconductor industry, to form insulating layers including shallow trench isolation (STI) or inter-layer dielectrics (ILD). SOD has several advantages over high density plasma chemical vapor deposition (HDP-CVD) for manufacturing process, such as less defect and higher throughput. However, both SOD and HDP-CVD have a drawback, which is a high temperature curing process required to make pure silicon oxide layers.High temperature curing could cause high stress and thermal distortion. These disadvantages are becoming more problematic as the semiconductor device shrinks. To resolve the problem, we tested several additives to moderate the curing temperature. It was found out that amine compounds were effective to convert SOD polymer into silicon oxide, therefore the curing process could be performed at a lower temperature. We also observed that the SOD films containing amine additives have higher etch resistance during a wet etch process. These results, as well as the lower curing temperature, are beneficial for manufacturing insulating layers. Further investigation is ongoing to characterize other film properties of the SOD with additives, and to optimize the formulation conditions according to the requirements of manufacturing processes.