Mechanism of Thermal Atomic Layer Etch of W Metal Using Sequential Oxidation and Chlorination: A First-Principles Study

Thermal atomic layer etch (ALE) of W metal can be achieved by sequential self-limiting oxidation and chlorination reactions at elevated temperatures. In this paper, we analyze the reaction mechanisms of W ALE using the first-principles simulation. We show that oxidizing agents such as O₂, O₃, and N₂O can be used to produce a WO_x surface layer in the first step of an ALE process with ozone being the most reactive. While the oxidation pulse on clean W is very exergonic, our study suggests that runaway oxidation of W is not thermodynamically favorable. In the second ALE pulse, WCl₆ and Cl₂ remove the oxidized surface W atoms by the formation of volatile tungsten oxychloride (W_xO_yCl_z) species. In this pulse, each adsorbed WCl₆ molecule was found to remove one surface W atom with a moderate energy cost. Our calculations further show that the desorption of the additional etch products is endothermic by up to 4.7 eV. Our findings are consistent with the high temperatures needed to produce ALE in experiments. In total, our quantum chemical calculations have identified the lowest energy pathways for ALE of tungsten metal along with the most likely etch products, and these findings may help guide the development of improved etch reagents.