Analysis of a plasma-assisted reactive evaporation process for preparation of ZnO thin films: Modeling and experimentation

Abstract

This paper focuses on modeling and simulation of a plasma-assisted reactive evaporation process. A dimensional unsteady-state model consisting of six nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations which account for the diffusive and convective mass transfer, bulk and surface reactions, non-uniform fluid flow, and plasma electron density profiles is developed. The equations are spatially discretized using finite difference methods and then numerically solved. The simulation results are validated by comparison with a commercial simulation software that computes similar equation systems. To validate the model, experimental measurements of film thickness are carried out on ZnO films deposited by plasma-assisted reactive evaporation. After 130 min of deposition time and deposition rate around 6 nm/min, the simulated results and the experimental measurements exhibit a good agreement (770 nm and 750 nm respectively), just around 2.59% discrepancy in the final thin film thickness, hence showing the high accuracy of the developed model.