Polymer assisted deposition of oxide and nitride films

Polymer assisted deposition (PAD) is a new thin film deposition technique which has been developed recently. In this technique, aqueous solutions of metal precursors and water-soluble polymers are combined together. This results in homogenous and steady solutions by binding the metal ions to the polymers. After coating the solutions on the substrates, the precursor films will go through a heat treatment to pyrolyze the polymer and form solid films, In this paper, we show some representative oxide and nitride films grown by PAD, including simple oxide/nitride such as TiO₂, GaN, AlN and complex oxide/nitride such as (Ba, Sr)TiO₃ and Ti_1-xAl_xN. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, dielectric measurement, and optics measurement are used to characterize structural and physical properties of the films. Effects of substrates and growth conditions on structural and physical properties are discussed. These results indicate that PAD can be used widely to prepare high quality oxide and nitride thin films.