Direct-Write Chemical Vapor Deposition
Abstract
Direct-write pattering, using chemical vapor deposition through a nozzle, enables localized film growth using high-purity precursors standard to the electronics industry. Yet, achieving sub 100 μm feature control has been limited by nozzle design and unquantified precursor surface diffusion. Here, we report a direct-write chemical vapor deposition platform that employs a 10 μm tip diameter glass micro-nozzle mounted on a scanning stage above a heated substrate in ultra-high vacuum. Using this approach, we demonstrate the continuous single-pass writing of 500 nm thick metallic aluminum lines with a 30 μm linewidth on titanium nitride-coated silicon. This capability enables maskless, localized growth under systematically varied deposition conditions on a single substrate. To analyze the resulting deposit profiles, we introduce a transport framework coupling Knudsen gas emission from the micro-nozzle with surface diffusion to extract the effective precursor diffusion length, Ld. Ld captures the combined impact of precursor surface mobility, residence time, substrate temperature (165∘C to 205∘C), growth duration, and nozzle height, contracting from 17.4 μm down to 3.2 μm at elevated temperatures. These results establish Ld as a quantitative parameter for evaluating laterally confined chemical vapor growth and predicting feature resolution limits. This approach provides a practical methodology to measure and quantify precursor surface transport in localized film synthesis.
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BibTeX
@misc{ketkar2026directwrite,
title = {{Direct-Write Chemical Vapor Deposition}},
author = {Eeshan Ketkar and Swarnabha Chattaraj and Koichi Tanaka and Samy Kouidri and Supratik Guha},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.07113},
eprint = {2610.07113},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07113},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Direct-Write Chemical Vapor Deposition
AU - Eeshan Ketkar
AU - Swarnabha Chattaraj
AU - Koichi Tanaka
AU - Samy Kouidri
AU - Supratik Guha
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.07113
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07113
AB - Direct-write pattering, using chemical vapor deposition through a nozzle, enables localized film growth using high-purity precursors standard to the electronics industry. Yet, achieving sub 100 μm feature control has been limited by nozzle design and unquantified precursor surface diffusion. Here, we report a direct-write chemical vapor deposition platform that employs a 10 μm tip diameter glass micro-nozzle mounted on a scanning stage above a heated substrate in ultra-high vacuum. Using this approach, we demonstrate the continuous single-pass writing of 500 nm thick metallic aluminum lines with a 30 μm linewidth on titanium nitride-coated silicon. This capability enables maskless, localized growth under systematically varied deposition conditions on a single substrate. To analyze the resulting deposit profiles, we introduce a transport framework coupling Knudsen gas emission from the micro-nozzle with surface diffusion to extract the effective precursor diffusion length, L_d. L_d captures the combined impact of precursor surface mobility, residence time, substrate temperature (165^∘C to 205^∘C), growth duration, and nozzle height, contracting from 17.4 μm down to 3.2 μm at elevated temperatures. These results establish L_d as a quantitative parameter for evaluating laterally confined chemical vapor growth and predicting feature resolution limits. This approach provides a practical methodology to measure and quantify precursor surface transport in localized film synthesis.
ER -