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Abstract
Film growth, condensation and melting of materials are very important physical processes, involved in the development of semiconductor related industry processes, alkali metals and their oxides, and recently in nuclear fusion projects. The growth of low melting point thin films via liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) has drawn attention especially for the manufacture of semiconductor compounds containing indium, gallium, tin, lithium and their alloys, all characterized by a low melting point. That allows the growth of films in the liquid phase and subsequent control on crystallization morphology by manipulating quenching conditions. LPE yields highly crystalline either thin (a few nm) or thick (100s of µm) films with high purity. If LPE is performed in downward-facing substrates, Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities appear, and this effect of gravity in the film growth has not been studied in depth. This paper presents the design, construction and preliminary testing of an experimental facility to study film growth from the liquid phase, and also condensation and melting processes. This facility consists of a thermal evaporator and a substrate holder where samples are placed facing down. The size of the sample holder and the ability to achieve controlled thermal gradients across it, would allow the study of temperature effect in grown films morphology, and also in condensation and melting phenomena such as dripping onset and critical angle for film/drop displacement. Besides, system allows to study condensation modes and surface roughness on the condensation dynamics of liquid films growing from the vapor phase.
Highlights
Condensation is a process of scientific and industrial importance, considered in the design of cooling towers, heat exchangers, and absorption towers
The suppression of convective and surface tension transport is achieved by avoiding temperature gradients in the solution and ensuring that height and radius of curvature of the liquid film are small compared to the characteristic substrate length
An excellent review explaining in detail the physics behind the growth of semiconductor thin films from the liquid phase can be found in the literature [6]
Summary
Condensation is a process of scientific and industrial importance, considered in the design of cooling towers, heat exchangers, and absorption towers. In the case of condensation and melting of materials, extensive information exists for steam and condensable hydrocarbon vapors, but for metallic and semiconductor materials, most references focus only in solid thin film growth, with scarce references regarding their vapor condensation on surfaces with a temperature above melting point. In the case of metallic vapors, most of the experimental work reported concentrates on thin solid film growth via Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), and sputtering techniques, but much less references have been found regarding the condensation of metallic vapor on solid surfaces above the melting temperature [15]. Some topic areas where the dynamics of condensation of metallic vapors is important, alkali metals, include liquid metal cooled nuclear reactors, in particular sodium/potassium and their alloys [19,20], and magnetic fusion reactors, mainly lithium and some of its alloys [21]. The experimental facility described in this paper was tested with lithium to obtain these particular data, but its use is not restricted to this metal
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