Recently, organic thin films have been attracting attentions due to their flexibility and transparency which are suitable for large-scale display and flexible electronics applications. Alternatively, inorganic thin films have several benefits over organic thin films such as high functionality (e.g. high conductance, high dielectric constant or high polarization, etc). Potentially, organic-inorganic hybridization can widen the range of their applications, for both worlds, with new functionalities. A novel technique has been reported using a modified atomic layer deposition (ALD) method, named molecular layer deposition (MLD), which can be applied to build an organic and inorganic hybrid stack. Hybrid thin films by MLD minimized the formation of defects during the growth of the organic and inorganic layers because they are deposited by sequential, self-limiting surface reactions similar to ALD process.

In this study, we investigated the growth characteristics of organic-inorganic laminates. We focused on 7-octenytrichlorosilane (7-OTS) and metal-oxide hybrid thin film, using ozone based MLD. 7-OTS is deposited by an exchanging reaction between functional group and water. The terminal vinyl group (C=C) of 7-OTS is converted into a carboxylic group (-COOH) through in-situ ozone (O3) modification. Metal oxide is then deposited as a linker layer in-between of each OTS layers using conventional ALD precursors, such as diethyl zinc (DEZ) and water. We found out that MLD process is kinetically control, which mean for a very limited of time, if we need organic molecules to form chemical bonding on top of certain surface, some special process would be required. In our experiment, we used repeating pulse to get a good coverage of organic molecules. Besides, effect of depositing temperature, dosing time, even in-situ UV activation with variety of time, location and power will also be discussed.

Characterization of organic-inorganic hybrid thin films have been extensively investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Electrical characteristics of the hybrid films will also be reported.

This research is partially funded through Korea-US collaboration R/D program by MKE-COSAR-KETI.