Achieving area-selective atomic layer deposition on patterned substrates by selective surface modification

A chemically selective process to achieve high-resolution area-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD) of HfO2 is introduced in this letter. By utilizing the intrinsically selective absorption behavior of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on different surfaces, SAMs are used to deactivate the oxide regions on a patterned silicon substrate while leaving areas of hydride-terminated silicon intact. Subsequently, a HfO2 thin film is selectively deposited onto the hydride-terminated silicon regions by ALD. The result by several analytical methods indicates that the process presented here has excellent area selectivity and forms HfO2 patterns with high spatial resolution.