NSF Award
9960571
This Small Business Innovation Research NSF Phase I project will demonstrate the potential of an 'On Demand Cocktail Creation System' that will significantly improve the MOCVD of complex thin film oxides, such as BaSrXTi1-XO3 (BST), PbZr XTi1-XO3 (PZT), SrBa2Ti2O9 (SBT), and Yba2Cu3O7-X (YBCO). These films represent a rapidly maturing material technology for memory, sensor, electronic, and other important state of the art commercial and military product applications. They are applied in the form of dielectrics, ferroelectrics, GMRs, pyroelectrics, piezoelectric, and superconductors, among others. Presently, sputtering is used to manufacture such films; however, it is well accepted that MOCVD is the needed deposition technology for thin, conformal defect/damage free films. MOCVD for complex oxides is limited by source chemistry and generally requires flash evaporation of chemical solutions (cocktails). COVA is presently leading the development of flash evaporation technologies with patented and developing designs. We have found that the greatest limitation to application of cocktail chemistry for manufacturers is that of stable, repeatable 'cocktails'. The individual chemicals are generally more stable than the created cocktails. We propose to make an 'On Demand Cocktail Creation System' operating in a controlled environment that will solve these and other problems. We will do this in an oxide-CVD lab of a commercial systems vendor.
