Electrodeposition is already well established as a key process step in the fabrication of electronic devices in microchip manufacture via the double Damascene process (1) and in through template plating in the manufacture of hard disk read write heads (2). Electrodeposition has great potential in the patterned deposition of materials for a range of other applications, such as solid state memory, thermoelectrics or infrared detection. In addition to providing a relatively green and scalable method for the preparation of thin film materials, electrodeposition brings significant advantages in the filling of high aspect ratio nanostructures compared to more conventional preparation processes, such as PVD or CVD, which make it especially appealing for the fabrication of sub 20 nm structures.

The p-block elements and their compounds and alloys are important materials for many electronic applications. Over the last 4 years we have developed an electrolyte system based on compatible tetrabutylammonium chlorometallate metal sources in non-aqueous electrolytes (3, 4) that allows the one-pot preparation of a wide range of functional materials, such as GeSbTe(5), CdHgTe, and BiTe, based on the p-block.

In this lecture I will discuss the electrodeposition of p-block elements from weakly coordinating solvents and present results for the electrodeposition and electrical characterization of GeSbTe solid state memory materials and CdHgTe infrared detector materials and contrast their properties to the properties of conventionally prepared materials.

This work is conducted as part of the ADEPT project funded by EPSRC (EP/N035437/1).

References

1. P. C. Andricacos, C. Uzoh, J. O. Dukovic, J. Horkans and H. Deligianni, IBM J. Res. Dev., 42, 567 (1998).

2. L. T. Romankiw and S. Krongel, “The Path from Invention to Product for the Magnetic Thin Film Head” in Electrochemical Engineering Across Scales: From Molecules to Processes, R. C. Alkire, P. N. Bartlett and J. Lipkowski (Eds), Wiley, Weinheim, 2015.

3. P. N. Bartlett, D. Cook, C. H. de Groot, A. L. Hector, R. M. Huang, A. Jolleys, G. P. Kissling, W. Levason, S. J. Pearce and G. Reid, RSC Adv., 3, 15645 (2013).

4. P. N. Bartlett, J. Burt, D. A. Cook, C. Y. Cummings, M. W. George, A. L. Hector, M. M. Hasan, J. Ke, W. Levason, D. Pugh, G. Reid, P. W. Richardson, D. C. Smith, J. Spencer, N. Suleiman and W. Zhang, Chem. Eur. J., 22, 302 (2016).

5. P. N. Bartlett, S. L. Benjamin, C. H. de Groot, A. L. Hector, R. M. Huang, A. Jolleys, G. P. Kissling, W. Levason, S. J. Pearce, G. Reid and Y. D. Wang, Mater. Horiz., 2, 420 (2015).