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“Background Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is an ultrathin film deposition method by sequential exposure of gas phase reactants for

the deposition of thin films with atomic layer Interleukin-3 receptor accuracy [1–3]. Each atomic layer formed in the sequential process is a result of saturated surface controlled chemical reactions [4–6]. In plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (PA-ALD), additional energy for the chemical reaction is provided by applying plasmas at an appropriate time interval during the reaction cycle, in which the plasmas are used to produce radicals by gas dissociation [4, 7, 8]. It brings the advantages of improving the reaction rates, the process efficiency, the fragmentation of precursor molecules, and the removal of product molecules [4, 9]. The reactive surface groups play an important role for the initial growth and nucleation of Al2O3 thin film in atomic layer deposition by reacting with the precursor molecules [10–13]. Hydroxyl groups are considered to be the typical reactive groups, which secure a good adhesion of chemical bonding between the underlying substrate and the deposited thin film [5, 13].