Nanostructures Development with Atomic Layer Deposition

This chapter presents a basis of typical atomic layer deposition (ALD) in nanostructure synthesis. The nanofilm as one important nanomaterial has been widely utilized in various nanodevices, microelectronics, and other fields. As an important and effective nanofilm deposition approach, ALD is quite similar to the common deposition techniques, such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Thermal ALD can be used to deposit a wide variety of binary metal oxides, such as Al2O3. The Al2O3 ALD films have a desirable dielectric constant and display very low electron leakage. The catalysis is significantly important in delivering reliable SiO2 films using the ALD technique. Metal ALD can be carried out using thermal chemistry independently. Nanolaminates, nanofilms, and superlattice materials, as well as mixtures or solid solutions of variable or arbitrary composition, can be obtained by ALD. Metal ALD based on thermal chemistry has been demonstrated for various metal nanofilms.