Structural characterization of sputtered PMMA in argon plasma Dhananjay S. Bodas, S.A. Gangal * Department of Electronic Science, University of Pune, Pune 411 007, India Received 1 February 2005; accepted 18 April 2005 Available online 9 June 2005 Abstract PMMA has been extensively studied for the numerous applications in the field of coatings, adhesives, sensors, biomaterials etc. PMMA can be deposited by many techniques viz. plasma polymerization, thermal deposition, RF sputtering, etc. Very few workers have considered the DC sputtering as one of the deposition technique. This study deals with the deposition of PMMA with the DC sputtering, using spin coated PMMA film as a target for sputtering. The DC sputtered polymer films are strongly adhesive to the substrate, due to enhanced surface wettability. This paper reports the DC sputter coating technique of PMMA using argon plasma. The substrate used for the deposition was single crystal n-type silicon of <100> orientation. The sputtered polymer films were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and contact angle measurement. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: PMMA; DC Sputtering; FTIR; XPS 1. Introduction Polymers have evolved in past century to become seminal materials in a wide variety of fundamental research and industrial applications, since the conduction phenomenon observed in polymers has given them a new dimension in electronic industries. Due to the incredible range of characteristics displayed by polymeric materials, their potential applications appear to be unlimited. This unique class of compounds finds uses in products as varied as contact lenses, artificial organs, structural materials, food packaging, potential substrates for flexible circuit fabrication, as photoresist material during micro- fabrication process and material for masking during fabrication of MEMS structures [1–4]. Due to a vast area of interest covered by polymer they obviously become the center of attraction for any scientist. More- over the properties of polymers could be tailored according to the requirement with doping of some other materials, or making or breaking the long chain compound. The other way is to crosslinking and/or branching. Due to so many iterations possible polymers happen to be the most suitable, easy to use, handle and available material. Properties of polymers could be governed/iterated by different process namely, RF sputter- ing, laser ablation, magnetron sputtering, ion bombard- ment, ion implantation etc. [5–9]. The monomers can be used for source materials and polymerized by plasma providing required thickness of the deposited film [10]. These deposition techniques have a potential to tailor the polymer properties. In the present work we have used DC sputtering of PMMA. We study the surface structure by different characterization techniques such as FTIR, NMR for characterization of compound after deposition, XPS for chemical bonding, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to 0167-577X/$ - see front matter D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.matlet.2005.04.039 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: sag@electronics.unipune.ernet.in (S.A. Gangal). Materials Letters 59 (2005) 2903 – 2907 www.elsevier.com/locate/matlet