CVD reactors

CVD reactors can have one of several configurations. Each has particular advantages and disadvantages. Reactors that support wafers horizontally have difficulty controlling the deposition uniformity over all the exposed wafers. Reactors having vertical wafer support produce uniform deposition, but are mechanically complex. Barrel reactors are not suited for extended operation at temperatures greater than 1200°C. 

CVD reactions are most often produced at ambient pressure in a freely flowing system. The gas flow, mixing, and stratification in the reactor chamber can be important to the deposition process. CVD can also be performed at low pressures (LPCVD) and in ultrahigh vacuum (UHVCVD) where the gas flow is molecular. The gas flow in a CVD reactor is very sensitive to reactor design, fixturing, substrate geometry, and the number of substrates in the reactor, ie, reactor loading. Flow uniformity is a particulady important deposition parameter in VPE and MOCVD. 

The gases used in the CVD reactor may be either commercially available gases in tanks, such as Ar, N2, WF, SiH, B2H, H2, and NH Hquids such as chlorides and carbonyls or soflds such as Mo carbonyl, which has a vapor pressure of 10 Pa (75 mtorr) at 20°C and decomposes at >150° C. Vapor may also come from reactive-bed sources where a flowing haUde, such as chlorine, reacts with a hot-bed material, such as chromium or tantalum, to give a gaseous species. 

Plasmas can be used in CVD reactors to activate and partially decompose the precursor species and perhaps form new chemical species. This allows deposition at a temperature lower than thermal CVD. The process is called plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD) (12). The plasmas are generated by direct-current, radio-frequency (r-f), or electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) techniques. Eigure 15 shows a parallel-plate CVD reactor that uses r-f power to generate the plasma. This type of PECVD reactor is in common use in the semiconductor industry to deposit siUcon nitride, Si N and glass (PSG) encapsulating layers a few micrometers-thick at deposition rates of 5—100 nm /min. 

As shown above, a thermodynamic analysis indicates what to expect from the reactants as they reach the deposition surface at a given temperature. The question now is, how do these reactants reach that deposition surface In other words, what is the mass-transport mechanism The answer to this question is important since the phenomena involved determines the reaction rate and the design and optimization of the CVD reactor. 

These models are designed to define the complex entrance effects and convection phenomena that occur in a reactor and solve the complete equations of heat, mass balance, and momentum. They can be used to optimize the design parameters of a CVD reactor such as susceptor geometry, tilt angle, flow rates, and others. To obtain a complete and thorough analysis, these models should be complemented with experimental observations, such as the flow patterns mentioned above and in situ diagnostic, such as laser Raman spectroscopy. 

Figure 5.6. Production CVD reactor for the coating of cutting tools.

Fluidized-bed CVD is a special technique which is used primarily in coating particles, such as nuclear fuel. A flowing gas imparts quasi-fluid properties to the particles. Figure 5.17 shows a typical fluidized-bed CVD reactor. 

In situ deposition of carbon (i.e., within the fusion reactor chamber which becomes the CVD reactor). 

The rotating-disk CVD reactor (Fig. 1) can be used to deposit thin films in the fabrication of microelectronic components. The susceptor on which the deposition occurs is heated (typically around lOOOK) and rotated (speeds around 1000 rpm). A boundary layer is formed as the gas is drawn in a swirling motion across the spinning, heated susceptor. In spite of its three-dimensional nature, a peculiar property of this flow is that, in the absence of buoyant forces and geometrical constraints, the species and temperature gradients normal to the disk are the same everywhere on the disk. Consequently, the deposition is highly uniform - an especially desirable property when the deposition is on a microelectronic substrate. 

The gas motion near a disk spinning in an unconfined space in the absence of buoyancy, can be described in terms of a similar solution. Of course, the disk in a real reactor is confined, and since the disk is heated buoyancy can play a large role. However, it is possible to operate the reactor in ways that minimize the effects of buoyancy and confinement. In these regimes the species and temperature gradients normal to the surface are the same everywhere on the disk. From a physical point of view, this property leads to uniform deposition - an important objective in CVD reactors. From a mathematical point of view, this property leads to the similarity transformation that reduces a complex three-dimensional swirling flow to a relatively simple two-point boundary value problem. Once in boundary-value problem form, the computational models can readily incorporate complex chemical kinetics and molecular transport models. 

Figure 6. Species profiles in a rotating disk CVD reactor. Inlet gas is 0.1 percent silane in a carrier of 99.9 percent helium. The disk temperature is 1000 K and the spin rate is 1000 rpm.

Consider Equations (6-10) that represent the CVD reactor problem. This is a boundary value problem in which the dependent variables are velocities (u,V,W), temperature T, and mass fractions Y. The mathematical software is a stand-alone boundary value solver whose first application was to compute the structure of premixed flames.Subsequently, we have applied it to the simulation of well stirred reactors,and now chemical vapor deposition reactors. The user interface to the mathematical software requires that, given an estimate of the dependent variable vector, the user can return the residuals of the governing equations. That is, for arbitrary values of velocity, temperature, and mass fraction, by how much do the left hand sides of Equations (6-10) differ from zero ... 

No slip Is used as the velocity boundary conditions at all walls. Actually there Is a finite normal velocity at the deposition surface, but It Is Insignificant In the case of dilute reactants. The Inlet flow Is assumed to be Polseullle flow while zero stresses are specified at the reactor exit. The boundary conditions for the temperature play a central role in CVD reactor behavior. Here we employ Idealized boundary conditions In the absence of detailed heat transfer modelling of an actual reactor. Two wall conditions will be considered (1) adiabatic side walls, l.e. dT/dn = 0, and (11) fixed side wall temperatures corresponding to cooled reactor walls. For the reactive species, no net normal flux Is specified on nonreacting surfaces. At substrate surface, the flux of the Tth species equals the rate of reaction of 1 In n surface reactions, l.e. 

A vertical CVD reactor (cf. Figure lb) consists of an axlsymmetrlc enclosure with the deposition surface perpendicular to the Incoming gas stream. The reactant gases are typically Introduced at the top and fiow down towards the heated susceptor. Thus, the least dense gas Is closest to the growth Interface which destabilizes the fiow. The result Is recirculation cells which Introduce not only film thickness and composition variations but also broaden Junctions between layers. This Is particularly of... 

Atomic natural orbitals, use, 18 Attached processors FPS-164, 238-239 IBM hosts, 239 Aufbau principle, 51-52 Axial momentum, conservation of, CVD reactor, 337... 

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of carbon from propane is the main reaction in the fabrication of the C/C composites [1,2] and the C-SiC functionally graded material [3,4,5]. The carbon deposition rate from propane is high compared with those from other aliphatic hydrocarbons [4]. Propane is rapidly decomposed in the gas phase and various hydrocarbons are formed independently of the film growth in the CVD reactor. The propane concentration distribution is determined by the gas-phase kinetics. The gas-phase reaction model, in addition to the film growth reaction model, is required for the numerical simulation of the CVD reactor for designing and controlling purposes. Therefore, a compact gas-phase reaction model is preferred. The authors proposed the procedure to reduce an elementary reaction model consisting of hundreds of reactions to a compact model objectively [6]. In this study, the procedure is applied to propane pyrolysis for carbon CVD and a compact gas-phase reaction model is built by the proposed procedure and the kinetic parameters are determined from the experimental results. 

Experiments of propane pyrolysis were carried out using a thin tubular CVD reactor as shown in Fig. 1 [4]. The inner diameter and heating length of the tube were 4.8 mm and 30 cm, respectively. Temperature was around 1000°C. Propane pressure was 0.1-6.7 kPa. Total pressure was 6.7 kPa. Helium was used as carrier gas. The product gas was analyzed by gas chromatography and the carbon deposition rate was calculated from the film thickness measured by electron microscopy. The effects of the residence time and the temperature... 

Figure 5.2. Two of the more common types of low pressure CVD reactor, (a) Hot Filament Reactor - these utilise a continually pumped vacuum chamber, while process gases are metered in at carefully controlled rates (typically a total flow rate of a few hundred cubic centimetres per minute). Throttle valves maintain the pressure in the chamber at typically 20-30 torr, while a heater is used to bring the substrate up to a temperature of 700-900°C. The substrate to be coated - e.g. a piece of silicon or molybdenum - sits on the heater, a few millimetres beneath a tungsten filament, which is electrically heated to temperatures in excess of 2200 °C. (b) Microwave Plasma Reactor - in these systems, microwave power is coupled into the process gases via an antenna pointing into the chamber. The size of the chamber is altered by a sliding barrier to achieve maximum microwave power transfer, which results in a ball of hot, ionised gas (a plasma ball) sitting on top of the heated substrate, onto which the diamond film is deposited.

Microwave Plasma CVD reactors use very similar conditions to hot filament reactors, and despite being significantly more expensive, are now among the most widely used techniques for diamond growth. In these... 

The CVD precursors are generally corrosive, hygroscopic and air sensitive or toxic. Thus CVD processing is usually carried out in closed systems. However, in many cases, deposition can be accomplished at atmospheric pressure in relatively simple systems. Schematic drawings of two experimental CVD reactors are shown in Figure 4.33. 

Features common to all CVD reactors include source evaporators with an associated gas handling system to control input gases and gas-phase precursor concentrations, a reactor cell with a susceptor heated by either radio frequency or infrared radiation, and an exhaust system to remove waste products (which may include a vacuum pump for low-pressure operations). Substrate temperatures can vary from less than 200 °C to temperatures in excess of 1000 °C, depending on the nature of the material layer and precursor used. Schematic diagrams of some simple CVD reactors are shown in Figure 4. 

Figure 4 (a) Cold-wall CVD reactor with parallel vapor flow (b) hot-wall CVD reactor with perpendicular... 

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