Nanometric 3D Printing of Functional Materials by Atomic Layer Deposition

Abstract

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.

SnO2-Coated Silver Nanowire Networks as a Physical Model Describing Their Reversible Domain under Electrical Stress for Stable Transparent Electrode Applications

“…These coatings are often deposited by spin-coating or by vacuum-based techniques such as atomic layer deposition (ALD) or sputtering and very often exhibit scalability issues for AgNW-based TEs. ALD is a thin film deposition technique allowing for the preparation of conformal and high quality films at the nanoscale and on complex substrates. − Atmospheric pressure spatial ALD (AP-SALD) is a recently developed alternative to ALD that allows deposition rates up to 2 orders of magnitude faster than conventional ALD, under atmospheric conditions, and lower temperatures. ,, To improve the stability of AgNW networks, nanocomposites with several types of oxides deposited by AP-SALD have already been studied in our previous works. Among the studied oxides there are ZnO, , bilayers of zinc oxide/alumina (ZnO/Al 2 O 3 ), and aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) .…”

Custom 3D Printed Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition Manifold for the Coating of Tubular Membranes

“…This SALD approach is particularly versatile since it can be easily tuned by simply modifying the manifold injector. For instance, we have shown that 3D printing can be used to customize close-proximity SALD manifolds in different materials, opening up a large span of possibilities. , …”