Residual stress and optical properties of fully rod-like poly(p-phenylene pyromellitimide) in thin films: Effects of soft-bake and thermal imidization history

A soluble poly(amic acid) precursor solution of fully rod-like poly(p-phenylene pyromellitimide) (PMDA-PDA) was spin cast on silicon substrates, followed by soft bake at 80-185°C and subsequent thermal imidization at various conditions over 185-400°C in nitrogen atmosphere to be converted to the polyimide in films. Residual stress generated at the interface was measured in situ during imidization. In addition, the imidized films were characterized in the aspect of polymer chain orientation and ordering by prism coupling and X-ray diffraction. The soft-baked precursor film revealed a residual stress of 16-28 MPa at room temperature, depending on the soft bake condition: higher temperature and longer time in the soft bake gave higher residual stress. The stress variation in the soft-baked precursor film was not significantly reflected in the final stress in the resultant polyimide film. However, the residual stress in the polyimide film varied sensitively with variations in imidization process parameters, such as imidization temperature, imidization steps, heating rate, and film thickness. The polyimide film exhibited a wide range of residual stress, -7 MPa to 8 MPa at room temperature, depending on the imidization condition. Both rapid imidization and low-temperature imidization generated high stress in the tension mode in the polyimide film, whereas slow imidization as well as high temperature imidization gave high stress in the compression mode. Thus, a moderate imidization condition, a single- or two-step imidization at 300°C for 2 h with a heating rate of < 10 K/min was proposed to give a relatively low stress in the polyimide film of < 10 μm thickness. However, once a precursor film was thermally imidized at a chosen process condition, the residual stress-temperature profile was insensitive to variations in the cooling process. All the films imidized were optically anisotropic, regardless of the imidization history, indicating that rod-like PMDA-PDA polyimide chains were preferentially aligned in the film plane. However, its degree of in-plane chain orientation varied on the imidization history. It is directly correlated to the residual stress in the film, which is an in-plane characteristic. For films with residual stress in the tension mode, higher stress films exhibited lower out-of-plane birefringence, that is, lower in-plane chain orientation. In contrast, in the compression mode, higher stress films showed higher in-plane chain orientation.