Various thin layer deposition techniques are currently available. However, most of these techniques are designed to deposit coating materials on flat surfaces rather than rough surfaces, curved surfaces, or surfaces having various protrusions and other features extending away from the plane of the surface. Common examples of conventional thin layer deposition techniques include spin coating and roll coating. When these techniques are used on surfaces that are not flat, the coated layers are often non-uniform or at least non-conformal. Some surfaces, such as surfaces of small features extending away from the plane of the main surface, may even remain completely free from the coating material after completion of the deposition operation. Other conventional deposition techniques, such as plasma deposition and sputtering, suffer from the line-of-sight requirement. When these techniques are used, the coated surface has to be directly exposed and, often, has to be orthogonal to a coating apparatus. Still other deposition techniques, such as chemical vapor deposition, are difficult to control as precursors used in these techniques react with a surface upon immediate contact. As such, areas with high precursor concentrations have higher deposition rates than other areas, which results in non-conformal coatings. It may be difficult, if not impossible, to evenly redistribute the coating material over the entire surface.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds