Coatings for enhancement of properties and performance of substrate articles and apparatus
Coatings applicable to a variety of substrate articles, structures, materials, and equipment are described. In various applications, the substrate includes metal surface susceptible to formation of oxide, nitride, fluoride, or chloride of such metal thereon, wherein the metal surface is configured to be contacted in use with gas, solid, or liquid that is reactive therewith to form a reaction product that deleterious to the substrate article, structure material, or equipment. The metal surface is coated with a protective coating preventing reaction of the coated surface with the reactive gas, and/or otherwise improving the electrical, chemical, thermal, or structural properties of the substrate article or equipment. Various methods of coating the metal surface are described, and for selecting the coating material that is utilized.
1. A method of forming a patterned ALD coating on a substrate part, said method comprising:
uniformly coating the part with an ALD coating of aluminum oxide having a thickness in a range from 5 nm to 5 μm;
masking an area of the ALD coating of the coated part with a non-coating physical mask comprising a sealed sheet or fixture; and
etching back unwanted coating material through the physical mask, wherein the substrate part is a component of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the substrate part is stainless steel, and the substrate part comprises at least one high aspect ratio feature selected from the group consisting of holes, channels, 3-dimensional features, hardware, screws, nuts, porous membranes, filters, 3-dimensional network structures, and structures with connected pore matrices.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the etching back comprises an operation selected from the group consisting of mechanical treatment, bead blast, physical treatment, plasma ion treatment, chemical treatment, plasma etch, and wet etch.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the ALD coating of aluminum oxide has a thickness in a range of 20 nm to 125 nm.