AVS 61st International Symposium & Exhibition
    Plasma Science and Technology Thursday Sessions
       Session PS1+TF-ThM

Invited Paper PS1+TF-ThM12
Plasma-enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition: Prospects and Challenges

Thursday, November 13, 2014, 11:40 am, Room 305

Session: Plasma Deposition and Plasma Assisted ALD
Presenter: Hyungjun Kim, Yonsei University, Korea
Correspondent: Click to Email

Due to various benefits such as atomic level thickness control and excellent conformality, atomic layer deposition (ALD) is expected to play an important role in future device fabrication. Especially, plasma enhanced ALD (PE-ALD) allows deposition at significantly lower temperatures with better film properties than conventional thermal ALD. This low temperature process makes PE-ALD more attractive for emerging nanoscale device fabrication. In addition, since ALD is surface-sensitive deposition technique, surface modification by plasma exposure can be used to alter nucleation and adhesion. In this presentation, the basic characteristics and several examples of PE-ALD processes for various applications such as semiconductor/display devices fabrication will be presented. The PE-ALD is a valuable tool to deposit very thin metal layers with good properties including little nucleation delay and high purity. Co, Ni, Ru films with good conformality was deposited by PE-ALD using NH3 plasma. Film properties as well as applications for emerging electronic devices of the metal PE-ALD will be discussed. Also, the use of plasma for ALD enables improvements in electrical properties of next generation semiconductor devices. Various high k oxides including HfO2, CeO2, La2O3 and doped high k oxides were deposited by PE-ALD from metal organic precursors and oxygen plasma. Especially, comparative study between PE-ALD and thermal ALD has shown that the interface defect density and leakage current are better for PE-ALD. Also, PE-ALD of ZnO thin films was investigated for thin film transistors. We studied the modulation of device parameters of PE-ALD ZnO based TFTs using UV light exposure. Finally, PE-ALD TiO2 thin films have shown high photocatalytic effects on various substrates. These indicate that the PE-ALD processes are versatile methods enabling nano scale manufacturing in emerging applications.