Ultra High Purity Condition ALD
DATE: Wednesday, December 10, 2025
TIME: 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ET
LOCATION: MIT.nano, 12-0168
SPEAKERS: Noel O’Toole, Business Segment Manager – ALD, the Kurt J. Lesker Company and Sean Armstrong is the Technical Sales Manager – ALD, the Kurt J. Lesker Company
ABSTRACT
Nitride materials by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) are of significant interest for a wide range of electronic applications including logic, power, and optoelectronics devices. One of the challenges for obtaining high-quality nitrides by PEALD is the prevention of oxidation during growth. This is especially true for nitrides of elements with a high affinity for oxygen such as titanium nitride. Due to the relatively slow deposition rates of nitride materials grown by PEALD, these processes have long suffered from relatively high exposures to background oxygen impurities yielding elevated oxygen levels in the resulting layers.
In this talk, O'Toole and Armstrong will discuss how ultra-high purity (UHP) reactor conditions provide a process environment for growth of nitride thin films with low oxygen content by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD). In particular, how UHP conditions correspond to partial pressures below 10-8 Torr for impurities within the PEALD process environment to limit incorporation before, during and after film growth. They will identify the various sources of background oxygen species and describe the measures taken to obtain UHP ALD reactor conditions.
Speaker Bios
Noel O’Toole is the business segment manager – ALD at the Kurt J. Lesker Company where he has worked for the last 17 years. Prior to joining Kurt J. Lesker, Noel spent ten years at Intel in Ireland and the United States. Noel is originally from Ireland and currently resides in Pittsburgh, PA.
Sean Armstrong is the technical sales manager – ALD at the Kurt J. Lesker Company where he has worked for the last 15 years. Prior to joining Kurt J. Lesker, Sean spent three years at an organic electronics company, Plextronics, and ten years at General Electric. Sean holds a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sean lives in Pittsburgh, PA.