Achieving area-selective atomic layer deposition on patterned substrates by selective surface modification

A chemically selective process to achieve high-resolution area-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD) of HfO2 is introduced in this letter. By utilizing the intrinsically selective absorption behavior of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on different surfaces, SAMs are used to deactivate the oxide regions on a patterned silicon substrate while leaving areas of hydride-terminated silicon intact. Subsequently, a HfO2 thin film is selectively deposited onto the hydride-terminated silicon regions by ALD. The result by several analytical methods indicates that the process presented here has excellent area selectivity and forms HfO2 patterns with high spatial resolution. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.