Growth inhibition to enhance conformal coverage in thin film chemical vapor deposition.
We introduce the use of a growth inhibitor to enhance thin film conformality in low temperature chemical vapor deposition. Films of TiB(2) grown from the single source precursor Ti(BH(4))(3)(dme) are much more highly conformal when grown in the presence of one of the film growth byproducts, 1,2-dimethoxyethane (dme). This effect can be explained in terms of two alternative inhibitory mechanisms: one involving blocking of surface reactive sites, which is equivalent to reducing the rate of the forward reaction leading to film growth, the other analogous to Le Chatelier's principle, in which the addition of a reaction product increases the rate of the back reaction. The reduction in growth rate corresponds to a reduction in the sticking probability of the precursor, which enhances conformality by enabling the precursor to diffuse deeper into a recessed feature before it reacts.
Kumar
Navneet
N
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Yanguas-Gil
Angel
A
Daly
Scott R
SR
Girolami
Gregory S
GS
Abelson
John R
JR