Thin-film trench capacitors for silicon and organic packages

Thesis advisor has approved the addition of errata to this item. The abstract text in the metadata record has been modified to match the document text.The continuous trend towards mega-functional, high-performance and ultra-miniaturized system has been driving the need for advances in novel materials with superior properties leading to thin components, high-density interconnect substrates and interconnections. Power supply and management is becoming a critical bottleneck for the advances in such mega-functional systems because power components do not scale down with the rest of the system resulting in bulky and stand-alone power modules. Amongst the power components, thin film capacitors are considered the most challenging to integrate because of several manufacturability concerns. The challenges are related to process compatibility of high permittivity dielectrics with substrates and high surface area electrodes, yield, leakage and losses. This thesis focuses on novel thin film capacitor technologies that address some of these critical challenges.MSCommittee Chair: Tummala, Rao; Committee Member: Gerhardt, Rosario; Committee Member: Markondeya Raj Pulugurth