Hot-Wire Assisted ALD: A Study Powered by In Situ Spectroscopic Ellipsometry

Alexey Y. Kovalgin, Mengdi Yang, Sourish Banerjee, Ramazan Oguzhan Apaydin, Antonius A.I. Aarnink, Sachin Kinge, Robertus A.M. Wolters

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    26 Citations (Scopus)
    36 Downloads (Pure)

    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 languageEnglish
    Article number1700058
    Pages (from-to)1-11
    Number of pages11
    JournalAdvanced materials interfaces
    Volume4
    Issue number18
    Early online date8 May 2017
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 22 Sept 2017

    Keywords

    • ALD
    • Atomic Layer Deposition
    • hot wire
    • in situ
    • Spectroscopic ellipsometry
    • 2023 OA procedure

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