Traditionally, semiconductors have relied fundamentally on crystalline silicon as a semiconductor, silicon dioxide as a dielectric, and doped polysilicon as a conductor. Continued scaling, necessary to drive improvements in performance and the economics of semiconductor manufacturing, has now exposed the fundamental limitations of these materials. The semiconductor industry has entered a renaissance of metallurgy and materials science where a wide variety of new materials are being introduced for many diverse applications.

These new materials have to be deposited at the nanoscale on substrates with very aggressive geometries. An emerging method, receiving considerable industrial attention, for the deposition of highly conformal films on these aggressive geometries is atomic layer deposition (ALD). During this process, a gas phase precursor is initially chemisorbed to the substrate in a self limiting fashion. This is followed by a pulse of a reactant that serves both to remove components from the precursor that are not desired in the film and to regenerate a surface that can absorb a subsequent dose of precursor. By repeating this cycle, conformal films with excellent thickness control can be achieved.

This talk will focus on the merits of using ALD as a method for depositing new materials for semiconductor applications. The challenges and progress that have been made in developing rationally designed organometallic and inorganic molecules as precursors to the materials incorporated into semiconductor processes will be highlighted.