Deposition and Electrical Properties of Al2O3 and HfO2 Films Deposited by a New Technique of Proximity-Scan ALD (PS-ALD)

A new cost-effective atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique, known as Proximity-Scan ALD (PS-ALD) was developed and its benefits were demonstrated by depositing Al2O3 and HfO2 thin films using TMA and TEMAHf, respectively, as precursors. The system is consisted of two separate injectors for precursors and reactants that are placed near a heated substrate at a proximity of less than 1 cm. The bell-shaped injector chamber separated but close to the substrate forms a local chamber, maintaining higher pressure compared to the rest of chamber. Therefore, a system configuration with a rotating substrate gives the typical sequential deposition process of ALD under a continuous source flow without the need for gas switching. As the pressure required for the deposition is achieved in a small local volume, the need for an expensive metal organic (MO) source is reduced by a factor of approximately 100 concerning the volume ratio of local to total chambers. Under an optimized deposition condition, the deposition rates of Al2O3 and HfO2 were 1.3 angstrom/cycle and 0.75 angstrom/cycle, respectively, with dielectric constants of 9.4 and 23. A relatively short cycle time (5 similar to 10 sec) due to the lack of the time-consuming "purging and pumping" process and the capability of multi-wafer processing of the proposed technology offer a very high through-put in addition to a lower cost.