AVS 57th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Thin Film Tuesday Sessions
       Session TF1-TuM

Paper TF1-TuM9
Direct Liquid Injection Chemical Vapor Deposition of Nickel Ferrite and Barium Titanate Thin Films

Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 10:40 am, Room Pecos

Session: ALD: Dielectrics for Semiconductors
Presenter: N. Li, University of Alabama
Authors: N. Li, University of Alabama
A. Wang, University of Alabama
A. Gupta, University of Alabama
T.M. Klein, University of Alabama
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Multiferroic heterostructures, such as the ferromagnetic-ferroelectric bi-layered structures, have attracted a lot of attention due to their potential application in multifunctional devices. The simultaneous tunability of magnetic and electric fields in such structures is very useful for microwave and millimeter wave planar devices such as tunable phase shifters, resonators and delay lines. Growth of high quality and thick (10µm-100µm) ferromagnetic and ferroelectric thin films is an essential step to obtain satisfactory final devices. In this work, the growth of single crystal nickel ferrite (NFO, ferromagnetic) and barium titanate (BTO, ferroelectric) thin films with high growth rate by direct liquid injection chemical vapor deposition is investigated. The liquid precursor source for injection was prepared by dissolving corresponding metalorganic precursors into a solvent. In our case, Ni(acac)2•PMDTA adduct (acac=acetylacetonate, PMDTA= N,N,N',N',N"-pentamethyldiethylenetriamine) and Fe(acac)3 were dissolved in toluene as NFO precursor solution; Ba(hfa)2•tetraglyme adduct (hfa=hexafluoroacetylacetonate) and Ti(tmhd)2(ipo)2 (tmhd= 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-3,5-heptanedionato, ipo=isopropoxide) were dissolved in toluene as the BTO precursor solution. The as-prepared metal organic precursor solution was fed into a commercial vaporizer system through a liquid mass flow controller (10g/h range). Epitaxial growth of NFO and BTO thin films on MgO(100) were observed using X-ray diffraction. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed the existence of trace amount of fluorine on the BTO surface. Scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy showed the grain sizes to be around 100nm and the surface roughness around 20nm. The growth rates of both the NFO and BTO thin films are in the range of 0.5~1 µm/h under our experimental conditions.