Atomic layer deposition has several advantages over other techniques due to the actual mechanism used to deposit films. ALD is especially advantageous when film quality or thickness is critical. ALD is also quite effective at coating ultra high aspect ratio substrates or substrates that would be difficult to coat with other thin film techniques.
Perfect films :
- Digital thickness control to the atomic level by depositing film one atomic layer at a time
- Pinhole-free films, even over very large areas
- Excellent repeatability
- Wide process windows (no sensitivity to temperature or precursor dose variations)
- Low-defect density
- Amorphous or crystalline, depending on substrate and temperature
- Digital control of sandwiches, heterostructures, nanolaminates, mixed oxides, graded index layers, and doping
- Insensitivity to dust (and ability to grow underneath dust)
- Standard recipes for oxides, nitrides, metals, and semiconductors
- 100% film density guarantee for ideal material properties (n, Ebd, k, etc)
Conformal Coating:
- Perfect 3D conformality, 100% step coverage: uniform coatings on flat, inside porous, and around particle samples
- Atomically flat and smooth coating that copies shape of substrate perfectly
- Large area thickness uniformity
- Easy batch scalability (precursor sources are small and allow stacking of substrates)
Challenging Substrates:
- Gentle deposition process for sensitive substrates, no plasma needed (though it is available as an option)
- Low temperature deposition possible (RT-400 °C)
- Coats everything, even on Teflon
- Excellent adhesion due to chemical bonds at the first layer
- Low stress due to molecular self-assembly