Few Monolayer Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) to Engineer New Surfaces and Interfaces

Atomically precise modification of surfaces and interfaces with few monolayer material leads to improved understanding and significant enhancements in properties, performance and reliability of heterogeneous materials and devices. This talk highlights the impact of few monolayer insulators, wide bandgap semiconductors and metals, deposited using atomic layer deposition (ALD) on a variety of surfaces and interfaces with direct relevance to electronic and photonic devices.

The first part of this talk deep dives into the process science of ALD in its early cycles. The nature and structure of few monolayer ALD films is highlighted. In particular, configurational state and entropy of adlayers during every half-cycle of ALD is exploited to exquisitely manipulate nucleation and growth of metallic Ru thin films.

In the second part of this talk, applied aspects of few monolayer engineering of surfaces and interfaces is discussed. Case studies included are the non-linear optical phenomena on Au-Al2O3 and Au-ZnO surfaces, high performance photocatalysts for CO2 photoreduction, improved optoelectronic responses from surface passivated CuO nanowires and few monolayer Ta2O5 to improve reliability of electrochromic windows.

Regardless of the application, ALD at its ultimate thickness limit holds true potential for surface and interface engineering. The control of this process appears to be remarkably simple and yet, has fascinating complexities that continue to push the boundaries of discovery of new materials and concept devices.

Biography: Dr. Parag Banerjee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Central Florida. He received his B.S. in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee in 1998, an M.S. from Washington State University in 2000 and a PhD from the University of Maryland (advisor, Gary W. Rubloff) in 2011; both in materials science & engineering. At the University of Maryland, he was the recipient of the John and Maureen Hendricks Energy Fellowship and won the best graduate thesis award in materials science & engineering. From 2000 to 2006, Parag was a Process R&D Engineer at Micron Technology Inc., working on gate and capacitor dielectric reliability and developing advanced, front-end-of-line processes for high-k dielectrics using atomic layer deposition. In 2011, Parag was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Washington University in St. Louis. Here, he set up a research program garnering strong industry and federal support for studying fundamental and applied topics in atomic layer deposition. He also received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award for innovating experiential methodologies for teaching semiconductor process science to undergraduate students, while graduating 3 PhD and 4 Masters students. Parag has over 50 high-impact publications and 8 U.S. and international patents. He is in the Program Committee of the International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition and serves on the Executive Committee of the Thin Films Division at AVS.