Invited Paper TF-ThA8
Fabrication Methods of Organic-Inorganic Hybrids Based on Atomic Layer Deposition

Thursday, November 10, 2016, 4:40 pm, Room 105A

Organic-inorganic hybrid materials are particularly attractive because they can provide means for not only combining the distinct properties of organic and inorganic components, but outperforming their constituents. The incorporation of inorganic layers into organic layers, therefore, provides the opportunity for developing new hybrid materials with synergic behavior, leading to improved performance. In this presentation, we report three fabrication methods of organic-inorganic hybrid materials using atomic layer deposition (ALD). (1) Molecular layer deposition (MLD) is a gas phase process analogous to ALD and also relies on sequential saturated surface reactions which result in the formation of a self-assembled organic monolayer in each sequence. The MLD method can be combined with ALD to take advantages of the possibility of obtaining organic–inorganic hybrid thin films. The advantages of the MLD technique combined with ALD include accurate control of film thickness, large-scale uniformity, excellent conformality, good reproducibility, multilayer processing capability, sharp interfaces, and excellent film qualities at relatively low temperatures. (2) Large-area graphene films produced by means of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) are polycrystalline and thus contain numerous grain boundaries that can greatly degrade their performance and produce inhomogeneous properties. A better grain boundary engineering in CVD graphene is essential to realize the full potential of graphene in large-scale applications. Here, we report a defect-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD) for stitching grain boundaries of CVD graphene with ZnO so as to increase the connectivity between grains. In the present ALD process, ZnO with hexagonal wurtzite structure was selectively grown mainly on the defect-rich grain boundaries to produce ZnO-stitched CVD graphene with well-connected grains. (3) ALD under high pressure showed that precursors often diffuse sub-surface into polymers. This subsurface diffusion and reaction cold result in the change of the chemical composition and the physical properties of the bulk polymers. Atomic layer infiltration provides a new approach for preparation of organic-inorganic hybrid materials from polymers.