Nanostructure fabrication by area selective deposition: a brief review

In recent years, area-selective deposition (ASD) processes have attracted increasing interest in both academia and industry due to their bottom-up nature, which can simplify current fabrication processes with improved process accuracy. Hence, more research is being conducted to both expand the toolbox of ASD processes to fabricate nanostructured materials and to understand the underlying mechanisms that impact selectivity. This article provides an overview of current developments in ASD processes, beginning with an introduction to various approaches to achieve ASD and the factors that affect selectivity between growth and non-growth surfaces, using area-selective atomic layer deposition (AS-ALD) as the main model system. Following that, we discuss several other selective deposition processes, including area-selective chemical vapor deposition, area-selective sputter deposition, and area-selective molecular beam epitaxy. Finally, we provide some examples of current applications of ASD processes and discuss the primary challenges in this field.