Reduction of Incubation Period by Employing OH-Terminated Si(001) Substrates in the Atomic Layer Deposition of Al2O3

The phenomenon of low initial growth rates in atomic layer deposition (ALD) of various oxides on HF-treated (thus H-terminated) Si(001) substrates, which is termed the incubation effect or incubation period, can be effectively avoided by use of OH-terminated Si(001) substrates. Two ways of preparing OH-terminated Si(001) were devised in this work: one from atomically clean Si(001) and the other from H-terminated Si(001). The effect of reducing the incubation period was confirmed in the ALD process of aluminum oxide (Al2O3) thin films in which trimethylaluminum and water were used as sources of aluminum and oxygen, respectively. The use of OH-terminated Si(001) substrates has another beneficial effect of producing thin films with very smooth surface morphology. We propose the use of OH-terminated Si(001) substrates for growing thin films of many other metal oxides that have shown the incubation period on H-terminated Si(001) substrates.