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Mechanism of thermal atomic layer etch of w metal using sequential oxidation and chlorination: A first-principles study
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Date
2020-07-15
Authors
Kondati Natarajan, Suresh
Nolan, Michael
Theofanis, Patrick
Mokhtarzadeh, Charles
Clendenning, Scott B.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
American Chemical Society
Published Version
Abstract
Thermal atomic layer etch (ALE) of W metal can be achieved by sequential self-limiting oxidation and chlorination reactions at elevated temperatures. In this paper, we analyze the reaction mechanisms of W ALE using the first-principles simulation. We show that oxidizing agents such as O2, O3, and N2O can be used to produce a WOx surface layer in the first step of an ALE process with ozone being the most reactive. While the oxidation pulse on clean W is very exergonic, our study suggests that runaway oxidation of W is not thermodynamically favorable. In the second ALE pulse, WCl6 and Cl2 remove the oxidized surface W atoms by the formation of volatile tungsten oxychloride (WxOyClz) species. In this pulse, each adsorbed WCl6 molecule was found to remove one surface W atom with a moderate energy cost. Our calculations further show that the desorption of the additional etch products is endothermic by up to 4.7 eV. Our findings are consistent with the high temperatures needed to produce ALE in experiments. In total, our quantum chemical calculations have identified the lowest energy pathways for ALE of tungsten metal along with the most likely etch products, and these findings may help guide the development of improved etch reagents.
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Keywords
Atomic layer etching , Transistor contacts , Density functional theory , Self-limiting reaction , Atomistic simulations , First principles
Citation
Kondati Natarajan, S., Nolan, M., Theofanis, P., Mokhtarzadeh, C. and Clendenning, S. B. (2020) 'Mechanism of Thermal Atomic Layer Etch of W Metal Using Sequential Oxidation and Chlorination: A First-Principles Study', ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 12(32), pp. 36670-36680. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c06628
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© 2020 American Chemical Society. This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.0c06628