Precursor Chemistry for Atomic Layer Deposition

Advanced electronic application areas have strongly required new materials due to the continuous shrinking dimensions of their devices. Specially, the development and use of metal precursors for atomic layer deposition has been extensively focused on application to electronic devices. Thus the systematic design and synthesis of metal compounds with relevant chemical and physical properties, such as stability, volatility, and resistance to air and moisture are very important in the vacuum deposition fields. In many case, organic ligands for metal precursors are especially focused in the related research areas because the large scale synthesis of the metal complexes with excellent properties exclusively depends on the potential usefulness of the ligands. It is recommended for metal complexes to be in monomeric forms because mononuclear complexes generally show high vapor pressures comparing with their oligomeric structure such as dimer and trimer. Simple metal alkoxides complexes are involatile except several examples such as Ti(OiPr)4, Si(OEt)4, and Hf(OtBu)4. Thus the coordinated atom of alkoxide ligands should be crowded in its own environment with some substituents by prohibiting the coordinated atoms from bonding to another metal through oxygen-bridging configuration. Alkoxide ligands containing donor-functionalized group such as amino and alkoxy which can induce the increasing of the coordinative saturation of the metal complexes and the decreasing of the intermolecular interaction between or among the metal compounds. In this presentation, we will discuss the development of metal compounds which adopted donor-functionalized alkoxide ligands derived from their alcohols for electronic application. Some recent results on ALD using metal precursors such as tin, nickel, ruthenium, and tungsten developed in our group will be disclosed.