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Increased selectivity in area-selective ALD by combining nucleation enhancement and SAM-based inhibition

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  • Focus Issue: Surfaces and Interfaces in Electronics and Photonics
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Abstract

An area-selective atomic layer deposition (AS-ALD) process is developed that achieves increased selectivity by combining two strategies: i) selective enhancement using a small molecule activator and ii) self-assembled monolayer (SAM)-based inhibition. Specifically, we show that Pt can be selectively deposited on SiO2 over Co. In this process, Co, which serves as the non-growth surface, is protected by an octadecylphosphonic acid (ODPA) SAM, while the subsequent nucleation and growth of Pt on SiO2 is enhanced using a trimethylaluminum (AlMe3) pretreatment. This combination of enhancement and inhibition yields 3–6 times  higher Pt coverage on the growth surface (SiO2) while maintaining selectivity of at least 0.98 after 100 Pt ALD cycles. Pt is used here as a model system, but this process can be extended for AS-ALD of other materials.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy under Award No. DE-SC0004782 (C.dP. and S.F.B). D.B.S. gratefully acknowledges the SRC Graduate Fellowship for providing support during her PhD. Part of this work was performed at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities (SNSF), supported by the National Science Foundation under award ECCS-1542152. The authors thank Dr. Nathaniel Richey and Dr. Richard Closser for reviewing this manuscript.

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    1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305-5025, USA

      Camila de Paula, Dara Bobb-Semple & Stacey F. Bent

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    1. Camila de Paula
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    2. Dara Bobb-Semple
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    3. Stacey F. Bent
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    Correspondence to Stacey F. Bent.

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    These authors contributed equally to this work.

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    de Paula, C., Bobb-Semple, D. & Bent, S.F. Increased selectivity in area-selective ALD by combining nucleation enhancement and SAM-based inhibition. Journal of Materials Research 36, 582–591 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43578-020-00013-4

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