A new inorganic-organic polymer for the passivation of thin film capacitors

Inorganic-organic polymers with barrier properties against water vapor, excellent electrical data (3, 2, R_D>10¹⁶ cm, E_D up to 400 V/µm) and good adhesion to various substrate materials have been developed. Tailored modifications of these materials provide an excellent protective coating for thin film capacitors. Several mm thick, expensive, encapsulations could be replaced by thin coatings (up to 10 µm). The polymer coating allows the use of thin film chip capacitors in surface-mount technology. As a measure for the efficiency of the coating, the capacitance decrease under controlled humidity has been used. The influence of the material composition, the type of catalyst during sol-gel processing and the curing conditions have been studied. Adhesion and water vapor permeation properties of the polymers and rheological properties of the coating solutions have been investigated. A protective coating is developed, which increases the withstandness of capacitors against humid conditions (90°C, 100% rel. humidity) by a factor of about 30 (compared to uncoated capacitors) and shows no crack formation during thermal cycling.