Patent ID: 8637123

Claim:
A method of depositing a thin barrier film, comprising: introducing a first precursor gas into a precursor chamber, the first precursor gas being reactive with ozone; injecting a flow of a second precursor gas into an oxidation zone that is distinct from the precursor chamber and separated therefrom by a partition through which one or more flow-restricting passageways extend, the second precursor gas including an oxygen-containing compound that at room temperature is a gas, that is substantially nonreactive with the first precursor gas and that is devoid of a significant amount of normal oxygen gas (O 2 ); exhausting from the precursor chamber so that at least some of the second precursor gas flows from the oxidation zone through the passageways and into the precursor chamber, thereby inhibiting the first precursor gas from migrating into the oxidation zone; transporting a substrate along a transport path back and forth between the precursor chamber and the oxidation zone multiple times, the transport path extending through at least some of the passageways and into the precursor chamber where the first precursor gas chemisorbs to a surface of the substrate as a chemisorbed species; and generating an unstable oxygen radical species from the oxygen-containing compound without generating ozone by forming a plasma from the second precursor gas in the oxidation zone proximal of the transport path so that the substrate is exposed to the unstable oxygen radical species without being exposed to ozone when the substrate is transported through the oxidation zone, the unstable oxygen radical species being reactive with the chemisorbed species to deposit a thin barrier film on the substrate.