Influence of the carrier gas on HfCl4-H2O and ZrCl4-H2O atomic layer processes was investigated. The growth rates of HfO2 and ZrO2 decreased with increasing flow rate and pressure of the N-2 carrier gas. Data of real-time quartz crystal microbalance measurements demonstrated that the effect observed was mainly due to influence of carrier gas on surface reactions and the role of overlapping the precursor pulses was negligible. At the same increase of the carrier gas mass flow, the increase of the linear flow rate led to more significant changes of thin-film properties than the increase of the carrier gas pressure did. Thin films with higher density, higher refractive index and, particularly, lower concentration of residual chlorine were obtained at higher carrier gas flow rates. Increase of the carrier gas flow rate also resulted in a higher concentration of a metastable phase in HfO2 thin films deposited at 300 degrees C. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.