1. aSo long as the amount of precursor and coreactant delivered to the surface is sufficient to ensure complete reaction and maximum surface coverage, the film thickness will depend only on the number of precursor/purge/coreactant/purge cycles, even within high aspect ratio features. This is termed self-limiting growth, and if self-limiting growth cannot be achieved, the deposition method is pulsed CVD, rather than ALD.
2. bFor the remainder of this paper, ALD will refer exclusively to thermal ALD.