Influence of porous media and substrate rotation on AlN growth in MNVPE reactors based on CFD simulations

Abstract

AlN is an important III-V wide-bandwidth semiconductor material. Its maximum (ultra-wide) direct bandgap of up to 6.2 eV at room temperature and excellent physical properties make it have great application prospects in the fields of high-power high-frequency electronics and high-efficiency optoelectronic devices. In this paper, based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the finite volume method was employed to investigate the process of growing AlN thin films by MNVPE using CFD simulation software for three-dimensional numerical simulation. By optimizing the chamber structure, it was devoted to improving the growth rate and uniformity of AlN thin films. Different thicknesses of porous media were placed in front of the substrate respectively, and the flow field analysis showed that the presence of eddy currents can be effectively suppressed to reduce the pre-reaction, and the best growth effect was achieved when the thickness reached 7 cm. With the increasing of porosity, more gas reached the substrate surface and improved the growth rate of AlN films. Secondly, for the 90° substrate, substrate rotation created a pumping effect and the growth rate was higher with the increase of the rotation speed. At 160 rpm, the growth rate reached 11.29 μm/h and the coefficient of variation decreased to less than 5 %.