SALD is in the air: impact on open-air Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition on thin film processing and materials properties
David Muñoz-Rojas
1Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP*, LMGP, 38000 Grenoble, France
"Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition (SALD) is a recent variant of ALD that offers fast processing, even at atmospheric pressure, while preserving the unique assets of ALD, namely, precise thickness control down to the nanometer, high-quality films even at low temperatures, and unique conformality. As a result, SALD is ideal for applications requiring high throughput at low cost, such as new generation photovoltaics, LEDs or packaging. In particular, the SALD approach based on close-proximity deposition heads is highly versatile since it can be easily customized by proper design of the deposition heads and because the deposition takes place in the open air without the need of any deposition chamber.
But there is more to SALD than a faster and scalable version of SALD. In particular, I will illustrate how 3D printing can be used to prototype and customize close-proximity deposition heads, and how in so doing SALD can indeed be tuned to deposit custom patterns without the need of pre-patterning steps. This approach represents a new versatile way of printing functional materials and devices with spatial and topological control (i.e. 3D printing of functional materials), thus extending the potential of SALD, and of ALD in general. I will then present recent studies showing the effect of open-air processing on the properties of the thin films deposited with our close-proximity system, and how the choice of precursor can have a huge impact on the final properties of the materials deposited. The potential of SALD will be illustrated through different examples of applications of the thin films developed in our group, including photovoltaics and transparent electrodes based on composites of metallic nanowire networks and oxide coatings."