Thermal atomic layer deposition of tungsten carbide films from WCl6 and TMA

Kyle J. Blakeney and Prof Winter from Department of Chemistry, Wayne State University just published a new exciting ALD path to tungsten carbide. WCl₆ has favorable precursor characteristics and advantages over the widely used WF₆, which is corrosive and toxic. In addition, fluorine tend to diffuse into dielectric layers (SiO2, SiN, high-k) and can cause reliability issues for transistor and memory devices e.g. in CMOS Logic, DRAM and NAND Flash Memory.

Films for this study were deposited in a Picosun R75-BE ALD reactor and WCl₆ (99.9%, Strem)  delivered at 125 °C using the solid state booster in the reactor. You may find more details an the ALD redactors at their lab here (LINK).

Please check out the publication in JVSTA A - Open source available for all!

Free, Published Online: November 2017Accepted: October 2017

Thermal atomic layer deposition of tungsten carbide films from WCl₆ and AlMe₃

Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films 36, 01A104 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1116/1.5002667

Kyle J. Blakeney and Charles H. Winter

Nice little story on thermal #ALDep of tungsten carbide online now. TMA is definitely the most versatile ALD precursor https://t.co/65yNQpNcDl

— Kyle Blakeney (@nano_Kyle) November 15, 2017

Also nice to see the refernce No. 33 to this Blog :-)