Advances in atomic level deposition technologies

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has emerged as an enabling thin film deposition technology for making semiconductor devices with design rules below 100nm, especially when conformal coatings on high aspect ratio devices are needed. However, ALD is limited in deposition rate. In response to this, recent advances include new capabilities using high productivity thermal ALD, plasma assisted ALD and pulsed CVD. These various technologies, referred to as "atomic level deposition". They all have the ability to deposit films with digital control, with granularity at the 0.1- 1nm levels, albeit with different conformality capabilities. Applications for the diverse technologies include: advanced gates, DRAM capacitors, non-volatile memories and interconnects, as well as data storage devices. This paper reviews advances of the various atomic level deposition approaches in the context of their actual and potential applications