• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.53-64
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• 2023

Atomic layer etching (ALE) is a promising technique with atomic-level thickness controllability and high selectivity based on self-limiting surface reactions. ALE is performed by sequential exposure of the film surface to reactants, which results in surface modification and release of volatile species. Among the various ALE methods, thermal ALE involves a thermally activated reaction by employing gas species to release the modified surface without using energetic species, such as accelerated ions and neutral beams. In this study, the basic principle and surface reaction mechanisms of thermal ALE?processes, including "fluorination-ligand exchange reaction", "conversion-etch reaction", "conversion-fluorination reaction", "oxidation-fluorination reaction", "oxidation-ligand exchange reaction", and "oxidation-conversion-fluorination reaction" are described. In addition, the reported thermal ALE processes for the removal of various oxides, metals, and nitrides are presented.

• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.160-168
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• 2023

Recently, investigation on metallization is a key for a stretchable display. Amorphous metal such as Ni and Zr based amorphous metal compounds are introduced for a suitable material with superelastic property under certain stress condition. However, Ni and Zr based amorphous metals have too high resistivity for a display device's interconnectors. In addition, these metals are not suitable for display process chemicals. Therefore, we choose an aluminum based amprhous metal Al-Mo as a interconnector of stretchable display. In this paper, Amorphous Forming Composition Range (AFCR) for Al-Mo alloys are calculated by Midema's model, which is between 0.1 and 0.25 molybdenum, as confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The elongation tests revealed that amorphous Al-20Mo alloy thin films exhibit superior stretchability compared to pure Al thin films, with significantly less increase in resistivity at a 10% strain. This excellent resistance to hillock formation in the Al20Mo alloy is attributed to the recessed diffusion of aluminum atoms in the amorphous phase, rather than in the crystalline phase, as well as stress distribution and relaxation in the aluminum alloy. Furthermore, according to the AES depth profile analysis, the amorphous Al-Mo alloys are completely compatible with existing etching processes. The alloys exhibit fast etch rates, with a reasonable oxide layer thickness of 10 nm, and there is no diffusion of oxides in the matrix. This compatibility with existing etching processes is an important advantage for the industrial production of stretchable displays.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.224-232
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• 2000

Aluminum metal process in surface micromachining enables to fabricate Al electrodes or Al structures, which improve electrical characteristics by reducing contact- and line-resistance or makes the whole process to be simple by using oxide as sacrificial layer. However, it is not possible to use conventional sacrificial layer etching process, because HF solution attacks aluminum as well as sacrificial oxide. The mixed solution of BHF and glycerine as an alternative shows the adequate properties to meet with this end. The exact etching properties, however, are sensitively depends on the geometry of the released structure, because the most etching process of sacrificial layer proceeds to the lateral direction in narrow space. Also, the surface roughness of aluminum affects to the etching characteristics. This paper reports experimental results on the effect of microstructure and surface roughness of aluminum to the etching properties. Considering these effects, we propose the optimized etching condition, which can be used practically for the fabrication of aluminum electrodes and microstructures by using standard surface micromachining process without modification or additional process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.363-363
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• 2014

Ruthenium (Ru) has attractive material properties due to its promising characteristics such as a low resistivity ($7.1{\mu}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ in the bulk), a high work function of 4.7 eV, and feasibility for the dry etch process. These properties make Ru films appropriate for various applications in the state-of-art semiconductor device technologies. Thus, it has been widely investigated as an electrode for capacitor in the dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a metal gate for metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET), and a seed layer for Cu metallization. Due to the continuous shrinkage of microelectronic devices, better deposition processes for Ru thin films are critically required with excellent step coverages in high aspect ratio (AR) structures. In these respects, atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a viable solution for preparing Ru thin films because it enables atomic-scale control of the film thickness with excellent conformality. A recent investigation reported that the nucleation of ALD-Ru film was enhanced considerably by using a zero-valent metallorganic precursor, compared to the utilization of precursors with higher metal valences. In this study, we will present our research results on the synthesis and characterization of novel ruthenium complexes. The ruthenium compounds were easy synthesized by the reaction of ruthenium halide with appropriate organic ligands in protic solvent, and characterized by NMR, elemental analysis and thermogravimetric analysis. The molecular structures of the complexes were studied by single crystal diffraction. ALD of Ru film was demonstrated using the new Ru metallorganic precursor and O2 as the Ru source and reactant, respectively, at the deposition temperatures of $300-350^{\circ}C$. Self-limited reaction behavior was observed as increasing Ru precursor and O2 pulse time, suggesting that newly developed Ru precursor is applicable for ALD process. Detailed discussions on the chemical and structural properties of Ru thin films as well as its growth behavior using new Ru precursor will be also presented.