Edward Sacher - Böcker

This volume contains most of the papers presented at the Montreal Workshop on Polymer Metallization, held at the Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, Quebec, June 27-29, 2001. The Workshop offered a forum for the presentation of papers by experts in the field of polymer metallization and ancillary topics. The purpose of this volume is to highlight findings in the areas of instrumentation, low permittivity materials, polymer metallization, barrier layers and adhesion enhancement. The papers stress the finding that the metallization initially deposits onto low permittivity polymers in the form of clusters. Low permittivity polymers are explored, as are several instrumental methods for evaluating cluster dimensions and exploring cluster behaviour. The morphology and chemistry of barrier layer formation are presented, as are new methods of metal adhesion.

As the demands put on the polymer/metal interface, particularly by the microelectronics industry, become more and more severe, the necessity for understanding this interface, its properties and its limitations, becomes more and more essential. This requires a broad knowledge of, and a familiarity with, the latest findings in this rapidly advancing field. At the very least, such familiarity requires an exchange of infonnation, particularly among those intimately involved in this field. Communications among many of us in this area have made one fact quite obvious: the facilities provided by existing organizations, scientific and otherwise, do not offer the forum necessary to accomplish this exchange of infonnation. It was for this reason that Jean-Jacques Pireaux, Steven Kowalczyk and I organized the first Metallization of Polymers, a symposium sponsored by the American Chemical Society, which took place in Montreal, September 25-28, 1989; the Proceedings from that symposium were published as ACS Symposium Series 440, (1990). It is this same per­ ceived lack of a proper forum, and the encouragement of my colleagues, that prompted me to organize this meeting, so as to bring to the attention of the participants new instruments, materials, methods, advances, and, particularly, thoughts in the field of polymer metalliza­ tion. The meeting was designed as a workshop, with time being made available throughout for discussion and for the consideration of new findings.