Fluorinated and Thermo-Cross-Linked Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxanes: New Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Materials for High-Performance Dielectric Application

A fluorinated and thermo-cross-linked polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) has been successfully synthesized by thermal polymerization of a fluorinated POSS monomer having an inorganic silsesquioxane core and organic side chains bearing thermo-cross-linkable trifluorovinyl ether groups. This new inorganic-organic hybrid polymer shows high thermostability with a 5 wt % loss temperature of 436 °C, as well as good transparency (a sheet with an average thickness of 1.5 mm shows high transmittance of 92% varying from 400 to 1100 nm). Moreover, the polymer exhibits both low dielectric constant (<2.56) and low dissipation factor (<3.1 × 10^-3) in a wide range of frequencies from 40 Hz to 30 MHz even at a high frequency of 5 GHz. The polymer also shows low water uptake (<0.04%) and low D_k (near 2.63) after immersing it in water at room temperature for 3 days. These data imply that this polymer is very suitable to be utilized as a high-performance dielectric material for fabrication of high-frequency printed circuit boards or encapsulation resins for integrated circuit dies in the microelectronic industry. Furthermore, this work also provides a route for the preparation of fluorinated POSS-based polymers.