Thermal Versus Plasma-Enhanced ALD: Growth Kinetics and Conformality

Film purity, growth kinetics and conformality were compared for thermal and plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) of Al2O3, AlN and TiN. The use of a plasma to enhance the activity of the reactant gas results in a significant improvement of the growth rate and film purity. However, based on experiments with an ammonia plasma for the growth AlN, the conformality of PE-ALD appears to be quite limited.