Graphene Implementation Study in Semiconductor Processing

Abstract: Graphene, with its two-dimensional nature and unique properties, has for over a decade captured enormous interests in both industry and academia. This work tries to answer the question of what would happen to graphene when it is subjected to various processing conditions and how this would affect the graphene functionality. The focus is placed on its ability to withstand different thin-film deposition environments with regard to the implementation of graphene in two application areas: as a diffusion barrier and in electronic devices.With single-layer graphene films grown in-house by means of chemical vapor deposition (CVD), four techniques among the well-established thin-film deposition methods are studied in detail: atomic layer deposition (ALD), evaporation, sputter-deposition and spray-deposition. And in this order, these methods span a large range of kinetic impact energies from low to high. Graphene is known to have a threshold displacement energy of 22 eV above which carbon atoms are ejected from the lattice. Thus, ALD and evaporation work with energies below this threshold, while sputtering and spraying may involve energies above. The quality of the graphene films undergone the various depositions is mainly evaluated using Raman spectroscopy.Spray deposition of liquid alloy Ga-In-Sn is shown to require a stack of at least 4 layers of graphene in order to act as an effective barrier to the Ga diffusion after the harsh spray-processing. Sputter-deposition is found to benefit from low substrate temperature and high chamber pressure (thereby low kinetic impact energy) so as to avoid damaging the graphene. Reactive sputtering should be avoided. Evaporation is non-invasiveness with low kinetic impact energy and graphene can be subjected to repeated evaporation and removal steps without losing its integrity. With ALD, the effects on graphene are of different nature and they are investigated in the field-effect-transistor (FET) configuration. The ALD process for deposition of Al2O3 films is found to remove undesired dopants from the prior processing and the Al2O3 films are shown to protect the graphene channel from doping by oxygen. When the substrate is turned hydrophobic by chemical treatment prior to graphene transfer-deposition, a unipolar transistor behavior is obtained.