Growth of controllable ZnO film by atomic layer deposition technique via inductively coupled plasma treatment

An inductively coupled plasma technique (ICP), namely, remote-plasma treatment was introduced to ionize the water molecules as the precursor for the deposition of ZnO film via the atomic layer deposition processes. Compared with the H2O gas as the precursor for the ALD growth, the ionized water molecules can provide a lesser energy to uniformly stabilize oxidization processes, resulting in a better film quality with a higher resistivity owing to less formation of intrinsic defects at a lower growth temperature. The relationship between resistivity and formation mechanisms have been discussed and investigated through analyses of atomic force microscopy, photonluminescence, and absorption spectra, respectively. Findings indicate that the steric hindrance of the ligands plays an important rule for the ALD-ZnO film sample with the ICP treatment while the limited number of bonding sites will be dominant for the ALD-ZnO film without the ICP treatment owing to decreasing of the reactive sites via the ligand-exchange reaction during the dissociation process. Finally, the enhanced aspect-ratio into the anodic aluminum oxide with the better improved uniform coating of ZnO layer after the ICP treatment was demonstrated, providing an important information for a promising application in electronics based on ZnO ALD films. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4768839]