Enhancing oxide/nitride selectivity in area-selective atomic layer deposition via pyridine-catalyzed inhibition

초록

Area-selective atomic layer deposition (AS-ALD) has emerged as a key bottom-up method for self-aligned nanofabrication in advanced semiconductor architectures. Herein, we present a pyridine-assisted inhibition strategy that improves deposition selectivity by promoting the adsorption of volatile small molecule inhibitors (SMIs) onto non-growth areas (NGAs) without altering the intrinsic surface chemistry. Trimethylsilyl chloride (TMS-Cl) and (diethylamino)trimethylsilane (DEATMS) were employed as representative SMIs to examine their blocking behavior on –NH terminated SiN and –OH terminated SiO2 surfaces, respectively. Vapor-phase pretreatment with pyridine leads to prolonged nucleation delay and suppressed Ru growth on the corresponding NGAs during subsequent ALD cycles, with selectivity maintained above 0.9 for up to 40 cycles. These results indicate that amine-assisted surface preconditioning provides a scalable and broadly applicable approach for achieving substrate-selective inhibition in AS-ALD, supporting integration into 3D semiconductor architectures. © 2026 Elsevier B.V.

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