STRUCTURAL AND CHEMICAL TEMPLATING OF ATOMIC LAYER DEPOSITION OF ALUMINA

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a method used to deposit high-quality conformal thin films.
The most prominent feature that makes the ALD technique different among the alternative growth methods is its self-limiting characteristic which enables control over the thickness and the composition of the grown film, as well as high conformality and uniformity of the film.

ALD has gained its fame during the mid. 90`s, when the semiconductors industry decided to utilize its abilities in the pursuit after smaller devices dimensions. Nevertheless, the specified advantages of this method were found highly useful for other fields, such as in optoelectronic devices, catalytic cells, nanotechnology, etc., and can be found in many different industries nowadays.

Current processes for selective thin films patterning such as photolithography, are tremendously expensive, complicated and demand special equipment and training. Therefore, there is a need for more available methods for this purpose.

In this work, we study the effect of structural surface modification using high surface energy sites, as well as chemical modification, on the selectively deposited thin alumina films. We believe that this methodology might open new ways to selectively deposit thin films without the need to perform several fabrication steps such as photolithography and etching.