Recently, fluorosilicate glass (FSG) has received much attention for application in microelectronics manufacturing due to its low dielectric constant and stable gap-filling ability. Although FSG films have been demonstrated as potential inter metal dielectrics (IMD) for sub-micron devices, integrating a stack of two fluorine doped silicon oxide film deposited on a high-density plasma chemical vapor deposition (HDP-CVD) system for gap filling and a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system for throughput has not been fully investigated. In this research, an excellent and exceptionally stable process was demonstrated for a stack of HDP-CVD FSG and PECVD FSG layers. Cracks that result from multi-level metal technology were eliminated when higher compressive stress PECVD FSG film was implemented as a capping layer. An 11% capacitance reduction was achieved when comparing a stack of FSG films to undoped silicon oxide. No problem occurred for photo, via etching and chemical mechanical polishing of FSG film. The FSG layer stack's via resistance (Rc(-)Via) as well as a full HDP-FSG scheme is comparable. These results are very promising for the integration of FSG films as inter metal dielectric for devices. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.