David Muñoz-Rojas

By David Muñoz-Rojas, Viet Huong Nguyen, César Masse de la Huerta, Carmen Jiménez and Daniel Bellet

In conventional atomic layer deposition (ALD), precursors are exposed sequentially to a substrate through short pulses while kept physically separated by intermediate purge steps. Spatial ALD (SALD) is a variation of ALD in which precursors are continuously supplied in different locations and kept apart by an inert gas region or zone. Film growth is achieved by exposing the substrate to the locations containing the different precursors. Because the purge step is eliminated, the process becomes faster, being indeed compatible with fast-throughput techniques such as roll-to-roll (R2R), and much more versatile and easier and cheap to scale up. In addition, one of the main assets of SALD is that it can be performed at ambient pressure and even in the open air (i.e., without using any deposition chamber at all), while not compromising the deposition rate. In the present chapter, the fundamentals of SALD and its historical development are presented. Then, a succinct description of the different engineering approaches to SALD developed to date is provided. This is followed by the description of the particular fluid dynamics aspects and the engineering challenges associated with SALD. Finally, some of the applications in which the unique assets of SALD can be exploited are described.

Part of the book: Chemical Vapor Deposition for Nanotechnology

By Daniel Bellet, Dorina T. Papanastasiou, Joao Resende, Viet Huong Nguyen, Carmen Jiménez, Ngoc Duy Nguyen and David Muñoz-Rojas

There has been lately a growing interest into flexible, efficient and low-cost transparent electrodes which can be integrated for many applications. This includes several applications related to energy technologies (photovoltaics, lighting, supercapacitor, electrochromism, etc.) or displays (touch screens, transparent heaters, etc.) as well as Internet of Things (IoT) linked with renewable energy and autonomous devices. This associated industrial demand for low-cost and flexible industrial devices is rapidly increasing, creating a need for a new generation of transparent electrodes (TEs). Indium tin oxide has so far dominated the field of TE, but indium’s scarcity and brittleness have prompted a search into alternatives. Metallic nanowire (MNW) networks appear to be one of the most promising emerging TEs. Randomly deposited MNW networks, for instance, can present sheet resistance values below 10 Ω/sq., optical transparency of 90% and high mechanical stability under bending tests. AgNW or CuNW networks are destined to address a large variety of emerging applications. The main properties of MNW networks, their stability and their integration in energy devices are discussed in this contribution.

Part of the book: Smart Nanosystems for Biomedicine, Optoelectronics and Catalysis

By David Muñoz-Rojas, Matthieu Weber, Christophe Vallée, Chiara Crivello, Abderrahime Sekkat, Fidel Toldra-Reig and Mikhael Bechelany

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a chemical vapour deposition (CVD) method that allows the layer-by-layer growth of functional materials by exposing a surface to different precursors in an alternative fashion. Thus, thanks to gas-solid reactions that are substrate-limited and self-terminating, precise control over thickness below the nanometer level can be achieved. While ALD was originally developed to deposit uniform coatings over large areas and on high-aspect-ratio features, in recent years the possibility to perform ALD in a selective fashion has gained much attention, in what is known as area-selective deposition (ASD). ASD is indeed a novel 3D printing approach allowing the deposition of functional materials (for example metals to oxides, nitrides or sulfides) with nanometric resolution in Z. The chapter will present an introduction to ALD, which will be followed by the description of the different approaches currently being developed for the ASD of functional materials (including initial approaches such as surface pre-patterning or activation, and newer concepts based on spatial CVD/ALD). The chapter will also include a brief overview of recent works involving the use of ALD to tune the properties of 3D printed parts.

Part of the book: Advanced Additive Manufacturing