HANAMI

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is a booming technology in both academia and industry that has emerged as a powerful tool for nanomaterial synthesis and functionalization. It is capable of depositing a wide range of materials in soft conditions, with subnanometer precision and a fine-tuning of their properties. To date, more than 1000 ALD processes have been developed to grow a large variety of materials, including inorganic, organic and organic-inorganic hybrid films that are in a large majority binary oxide compounds, to a lower extent nitride or metal films. Sulfide materials are relatively less explored despite their potential in several applications. However, some materials, especially multi-element ones, are still not accessible, suffer from contamination that deteriorates their optoelectronic properties or require harsh deposition conditions or annealing post-treatment, which limits their implementation in certain devices and is a clear loss of ALD benefits. Finally, area-selective ALD systems that take advantage from the substrate-precursor combination are rarely explored. Those issues can be solved by the use of an appropriate set of precursors: ALD is a chemical process, dictated by the surface chemistry, i.e. the nature of the precursors and of the substrate, and organometallic chemistry offers an almost infinite set of options. However, not every molecule is suitable and predicting its reactivity in the ALD chamber is tricky, as the specificities of ALD chemistry are still not completely understood. Actually, in many cases, authors report combination of precursors not reactive in ALD conditions, without being able to rationalize it. Eventhough comprehensive growth study processes based on in- and ex-situ measurements or atomic-scale modeling using density functional theory have been reported, few chemistries are actually tested due to multiple reasons (lack of accessible sources, time-consuming ALD tests, …), which limits the general understanding of ALD. The HANAMI (Disruptive metHod for ALD precursor design for New Advanced functional MaterIals) project aims at developing an original efficient precursor screening procedure for ALD to gain a deep understanding of its surface chemistry, generate new functional materials and apply them in innovative optoelectronic devices. This ambitious goal will be achieved by combining organometallic chemistry, numerical methods and material sciences in one project.