Multi-model hierarchy approach to simulate barrel reactors for epitaxial silicon deposition

Abstract
The epitaxial deposition of silicon thick films is still industrially performed with cold wall barrel reactors because of their high throughput and low cost of ownership. Unfortunately, such a high productivity is associated to film thickness control problems. System optimization and new reactor design can be performed satisfactorily only through models where the geometry, the reactor fluid dynamics and the deposition kinetics were accounted in detail. Here, the atmospheric Si deposition by SiHCl ₃/H ₂ mixtures in a LPE2061 barrel reactor was simulated through of a detailed fully 3D model solved by the commercial finite volume code CFX4.3. To speed-up the whole optimization procedure a set of auxiliary models (i.e., 1D and 2D) were also implemented and the paper is mainly concerned on the hierarchical procedure that links the use of the different models. As a corollary, the accuracy of representing the experimental data by the different models can be also deducted.