PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM Thursday, October 26, 2006 4:10 p.m. 1415 Biomedical & Physical Sciences Bldg. Refreshments at 3:30 pm in Rm. 1400 BPS Bldg Speaker: Yves J. Chabal Rutgers University Depts. Of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Biomedical Engineering and Physics & Astronomy Laboratory for Surface Modification, Rutgers, Piscataway, NJ Title: Building Materials One Layer at a Time: Technological Challenges as Scientific Opportunities Abstract: An important issue for a variety of areas, such as the microelectronics industry, is to control the growth and interface of a variety of ultra-thin films on semiconductor substrates with atomic precision. In this talk, we describe the use of atomic layer deposition (ALD) to perform highly conformal growth of high-k gate dielectrics, and focus on understanding the growth process and in particular the problem of minimizing the thickness of unwanted interfacial layer, such as SiO2 at the interface between high-k dielectrics and silicon substrates. To that end, we have developed a method to monitor the growth in-situ based on infrared absorption spectroscopy. In this talk, we show how infrared absorption spectroscopy can be used to yield most of the relevant information necessary to derive mechanistic information that help optimize the ALD process. In particular, we find that surface chemical functionalization of silicon surfaces provides a powerful means to tailor film growth and control the interface.