Specific Process Knowledge/Thin film deposition/Deposition of Aluminium Nitride

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All text by DTU Nanolab staff

Deposition of Aluminium Nitride

AlN films can be deposited by reactive sputtering or by atomic layer deposition (ALD).

In sputter systems, AlN can be deposited either by direct sputtering of an AlN target or by reactive sputtering with an Al target in a mixture of argon and nitrogen.

Comparison of the methods for deposition of AlN

	Sputter-System (Lesker)	Sputter-System Metal-Nitride(PC3)	ALD2
Generel description	Reactive Sputtering (2" Al target)	Pulsed reactive DC sputtering (PDC, 4" Al target) Reactive HIPIMS (high-power impulse magnetron sputtering)	Plasma Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition
Stoichiometry	Oxygen contamination issue (in 2016 a user got ~ 30 % O in the AlN, measured by XPS in the bulk of the layer).	Al:N:O ~ 53 : 46 : 1.5 in the bulk (see acceptance test results here). It should be possible to tune the Al:N ratio somewhat.	AlN
Film Thickness	few nm - 200 nm	few nm - ~ 1 μm	0nm - 50 nm
Deposition rate	0.055 nm/s (Power: 300W, pressure:1 mTorr, temp.: 400C, N2 ratio: 50%)	at least 0.5 nm/s (see conditions)	0.0625 nm/cycle on a flat sample 0.0558 nm/cycle on a high aspect ratio structures
Step coverage	Good	Not known, most likely medium-good	Very good
Process Temperature	Up to 400 °C	Up to 600 °C	350 °C
Substrate size	chips 1x 100 mm wafer 1x 150 mm wafer	chips 10 x 100 mm wafer or 10 x 150 mm wafer	Several small samples 1 50 mm wafers 1 100 mm wafers 1 150 mm wafer
Allowed materials	Silicon Silicon oxide, silicon nitride Quartz/fused silica Photoresist PMMA Mylar SU-8 Any metals	Similar to the Sputter-System (Lesker), see cross-contamination sheet	Silicon Silicon oxide, silicon nitride Quartz/fused silica Al, Al₂O₃ Ti, TiO₂ Other metals (use dedicated carrier wafer) III-V materials (use dedicated carrier wafer) Polymers (depending on the melting point/deposition temperature, use carrier wafer)

Further process information can be found here:

AlN deposition using ALD2
Deposition conditions and acceptance test results for sputter deposition of AlN in the Sputter-System Metal-Nitride(PC3).
For further information on AlN deposition using the sputter systems please contact the Thin Film Group (thinfilm@nanolab.dtu.dk). The Sputter-System Metal-Nitride(PC3) was acquired partly to make it possible to deposit high-quality of AlN films.