Abstract
Hot-wire assisted atomic layer deposition (HWALD) is a novel energy-enhancement technique. HWALD enables formation of reactive species (radicals) at low substrate temperatures, without the generation of energetic ions and UV photons as by plasma. This approach employs a hot wire (tungsten filament) that is heated up to a temperature in the range of 1300–2000 °C to dissociate precursor molecules. HWALD has the potential to overcome certain limitations of plasma-assisted processes. This work investigates the ability of a heated tungsten filament to catalytically crack molecular hydrogen or ammonia into atomic hydrogen and nitrogen-containing radicals. The generation of these radicals and their successful delivery to the wafer (substrate) surface are experimentally confirmed by dedicated tellurium-etching and silicon-nitridation experiments. It further reports on deposition of low-resistivity oxygen-free tungsten films by using HWALD, as well as on the effect of hot-wire-generated nitrogen radicals and atomic hydrogen in deposition of aluminum nitride and boron nitride films. In parallel, this work provides important illustrative examples of using in situ real-time monitoring of deposition and etching processes, together with extracting a variety of film properties, by spectroscopic ellipsometry technique.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 1700058 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Advanced materials interfaces |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 18 |
Early online date | 8 May 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22 Sept 2017 |
Keywords
- ALD
- Atomic Layer Deposition
- hot wire
- in situ
- Spectroscopic ellipsometry
- 2023 OA procedure