Thermal and plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition of SiO2 using commercial silicon precursors

•SiO2 thin film is deposited by thermal and plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD).•We report low-temperature deposition of SiO2 even at 30 °C by PEALD.•Scaling up of the atomic layer deposition processes to industrial batch is reported.•Deposited films had low low compressive residual stress and good conformality.

In this paper, we report ALD deposition of silicon dioxide using either thermal or plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD). Several aminosilanes with differing structures and reactivity were used as silicon precursors in R&D single wafer ALD tools. One of the precursors was also tested on pilot scale batch ALD using O3 as oxidant and with substrates measuring 150 × 400 mm. The SiO2 film deposition rate was greatly dependent on the precursors used, highest values being 1.5–2.0 Å/cycle at 30–200 °C for one precursor with an O2 plasma. According to time-of-flight-elastic recoil detection analysis measurements carbon and nitrogen impurities were relatively low, but hydrogen content increased at low deposition temperatures.