Plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition of cobalt using cyclopentadienyl isopropyl acetamidinato-cobalt as a precursor

Cobalt plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) using cyclopentadienyl isopropyl acetamidinato-cobalt [Co(CpAMD)] precursor and NH3 plasma was investigated. The PE-ALD Co thin films were produced well on both SiO2 and Si(001) substrates. The deposition characteristics and films properties such as resistivity, chemical bonding states and quantitative impurity level contents were investigated. Especially, Co deposition using this precursor was possible at very low growth temperature as low as 100 °C, which enable the deposition on polymer-based substrate. We demonstrate that this low growth temperature PE-ALD can be applicable to patterning of Co film by lift-off method, which was realized by direct deposition of Co on photoresist patterned substrate.