Data provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology
This data repository is the basis for the figures in the manuscript "Measuring out-of-plane permittivity of thin films to millimeter wave frequencies" , F. Bergmann et al. (2025), accepted for publication in IEEE TMTT. The abstract is as follows:
Modern microchips use multilayer stack-ups with many interstitial layers of dielectrics. Optimizing device performance and maximizing yield requires precise measurements of the out-of-plane permittivity of these dielectric layers. At the same time, high-performance microchips are pushing operating frequencies into the millimeter-wave range, requiring precise materials property knowledge at these frequencies to perform as intended. With this context, one outstanding challenge is to accurately measure out-of-plane permittivity of thin films. Unfortunately, the conventional method to extract this property, the metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor technique, produces inconsistent and therefore unreliable material data for frequencies above a few gigahertz. To address these inconsistencies, we designed an experiment with on-wafer devices of varying topology and varying geometry. We chose to study silicon nitride for this experiment because it is an ubiquitous dielectric in microchips, widely accepted as approximately dispersionless, and available with established processes in our cleanroom. Our experiment resulted in an out-of-plane permittivity of thin film silicon nitride of 𝜺𝒓 = 7.0±0.1 and a loss tangent of tanδ < 0.03 up to 90 GHz. Our key findings about improving on-wafer calibrations and modeling of the MIM devices will help material scientists and microchip designers to obtain reliable permittivity data on thin films at millimeter wave frequencies.
About this Dataset
Updated: 2026-09-19
Metadata Last Updated:
2024-10-22 00:00:00
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| Title | Measuring out-of-plane permittivity of thin films to millimeter wave frequencies |
|---|---|
| Description | This data repository is the basis for the figures in the manuscript "Measuring out-of-plane permittivity of thin films to millimeter wave frequencies" , F. Bergmann et al. (2025), accepted for publication in IEEE TMTT. The abstract is as follows: Modern microchips use multilayer stack-ups with many interstitial layers of dielectrics. Optimizing device performance and maximizing yield requires precise measurements of the out-of-plane permittivity of these dielectric layers. At the same time, high-performance microchips are pushing operating frequencies into the millimeter-wave range, requiring precise materials property knowledge at these frequencies to perform as intended. With this context, one outstanding challenge is to accurately measure out-of-plane permittivity of thin films. Unfortunately, the conventional method to extract this property, the metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor technique, produces inconsistent and therefore unreliable material data for frequencies above a few gigahertz. To address these inconsistencies, we designed an experiment with on-wafer devices of varying topology and varying geometry. We chose to study silicon nitride for this experiment because it is an ubiquitous dielectric in microchips, widely accepted as approximately dispersionless, and available with established processes in our cleanroom. Our experiment resulted in an out-of-plane permittivity of thin film silicon nitride of 𝜺𝒓 = 7.0±0.1 and a loss tangent of tanδ < 0.03 up to 90 GHz. Our key findings about improving on-wafer calibrations and modeling of the MIM devices will help material scientists and microchip designers to obtain reliable permittivity data on thin films at millimeter wave frequencies. |
| Modified | 2024-10-22 00:00:00 |
| Publisher Name | National Institute of Standards and Technology |
| Contact | mailto:[email protected] |
| Keywords | Microwaves , mmWaves , Wafer , Thin film , Permittivity , MIM |
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