Metallo-Organic Decomposition Process for Dielectric Films

摘要

The metallo-organic decomposition (MOC) process is a technique for producing inorganic films without processing in vacuum or going through a gel or powder step. The processing starts with metallo-organic compounds of the desired elements dissolved in an appropriate solvent. These solutions of individual metallo-organic compounds are then mixed in the appropriate ratio to give the desired cation stoichiometry for the final film to produce a formulation, which is itself a true solution, This formulation is deposited on a substrate by any of a variety of techniques to produce a wet film, which is then heated to first remove any solvent that did not evaporate during the deposition step and then to decompose the metallo-organic compounds to produce an inorganic film. A significant volume change occurs in going from the wet film to the inorganic film; if the inorganic film produced by a single pass through the process is not as thick as desired, the deposition and pyrolysis steps can be repeated as many times as necessary to produce a multilayer film of the required thickness. After the desired film thickness is achieved, the films are often subjected to a further heat treatment to control features such as oxygen stoichiometry, grain size or preferred orientation. Keywords: Polycrystalline films; Annealing; Ferroelectrics. (KT)