Atomic Layer Deposition of Al2O3 on NF3-pre-treated graphene

Graphene has been considered for a variety of applications including novel nanoelectronic device concepts. However, the deposition of ultra-thin high-k dielectrics on top of graphene has still been challenging due to graphene's lack of dangling bonds. The formation of large islands and leaky films has been observed resulting from a much delayed growth initiation. In order to address this issue, we tested a pre-treatment with NF3 instead of XeF2 on CVD graphene as well as epitaxial graphene monolayers prior to the Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) of Al2O3. All experiments were conducted in vacuo; i. e. the pristine graphene samples were exposed to NF3 in the same reactor immediately before applying 30 (TMA-H2O) ALD cycles and the samples were transferred between the ALD reactor and a surface analysis unit under high vacuum conditions. The ALD growth initiation was observed by in-situ real-time Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (irtSE) with a sampling rate above 1Hz. The total amount of Al2O3 material deposited by the applied 30 ALD cycles was cross-checked by in-vacuo X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The Al2O3 morphology was determined by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The presence of graphene and its defect status was examined by in-vacuo XPS and RAMAN Spectroscopy before and after the coating procedure, respectively.