Investigation of transport processes in a commercial hot wall CVD reactor with multi-substrates for high-quality pyrocarbon deposition

Abstract

A 3D CFD model is developed to illustrate the complex reacting flow in the commercial hot-wall CVD reactor using detailed gas and surface chemistry. This helps to understand multi-species transport and their interplay with the gas and surface reactions for pyrocarbon (PyC) deposition. The detailed transport phenomena models with temperature-dependent physical properties are incorporated into the model to improve accuracy. Valuable information such as microscopic local variations in gas velocity, temperature, and species distributions is obtained, which otherwise difficult to acquire experimentally. A sensitivity analysis is also performed to realize how the operating conditions affect the distributions of intermediate species and, ultimately, the growth rate of PyC. The understanding gained in this study is further used to optimize the CVD reactor to obtain high-quality PyC. The response surface methodology is employed to examine the interactions among various operating parameters that influence film performance.