Cryst. Res. Technol. 40, No. 10–11, 972 – 975 (2005) / DOI 10.1002/crat.200410470 © 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Horizontal hot wall reactor design for epi-SiC growth A. Veneroni 1 , F. Omarini 1 , M. Masi* 1 , S. Leone 2 , M. Mauceri 2 , G. Pistone 2 , and G. Abbondanza 2 1 Dipartimento di. Chimica Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milano, Italy 2 Epitaxial Technology Center, Contrada Torre Allegra, 95121Catania, Italy Received 15 November 2004, accepted 2 March 2005 Published online 15 September 2005 Key words SiC growth, hot wall reactor, chemical vapour deposition. PACS 81.15.Gh, 82.33.Ya, 83.85.Pt The model adopted for the simulation of a new industrial size type of horizontal cold wall reactor for epitaxial silicon carbide deposition is reviewed. The attention is focalized on the chemical mechanism adopted and on the comparison with some growth rate data and temperature profiles for the system ethylene, silane, hydrogen and the deposition of undoped silicon carbide. © 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1 Introduction Silicon Carbide (SiC) is the material of the new generation for the high power, high frequency and high temperature applications. In the last decade many efforts were done to improve and upgrade the material quality, both for the bulk and epitaxial growths. Up today, the determining step for the Silicon Carbide industrial application is the poor wafer quality obtained from the boules grown by the sublimation techniques. Accordingly, the deposition of a high quality epilayer is still needed to satisfy the microelectronic market requests. In this optic, the Chemical Vapor Deposition is the only industrial available technique for the deposition of a very high quality layer also for SiC. In this paper the simulation of the Silicon Carbide epitaxial deposition performed in a hot wall reactor type is presented. Industrially, deposition profile and film quality are the only performance parameters of interest. Both of them are determined by pressure, temperature and precursors concentration profiles inside the reactor. Thus, to obtain an accurate process description both the temperature field and the chemistry involved have to be correctly simulated. The attention was here focused on a new type of horizontal reactor with rotating susceptor. This reactor can hold up to 6x2” or 4x3” wafers due to the dimensions of its susceptor (i.e., about 20 cm). Standard process conditions for the system hydrocarbon, silane and hydrogen as carrier gas are pressure within the interval 0.1- 0.2 atm and temperature within the 1500°C-1800°C. The examined process conditions are the pure CVD ones, that is the inlet mole fractions were selected to avoid the well known homogeneous nucleation phenomenon [1- 3]. Previous simulations demonstrated that the fluid dynamic conditions are in the fully developed laminar regime (i.e., Re about 30) and no recirculation and flow non idealities are present in the deposition zone [2,3]. Thus for the, simulation of the process conditions, to speed up the whole process and to be compatible with the industrial needs, a simplified 1D model was adopted. More emphasis was placed in the development of the chemical mechanism involved in the deposition. While some previous work well addressed the gas phase chemistry [4,5] some questions were still present about the surface chemistry and in particular about the formation of not stoichiometric films. In particular a new series of surface reactions was introduced responsible for the Si, Si 2 C, SiC 2 sublimation and the formation of non stoichiometric crystal portion. That was possible allowing the formation of two fictitious solid species, identified as SiC 2(s) and Si 2 C (s) , with the aim to mimic the formation of carbon and silicon rich island on the growing film. Finally, the model predictions were compared with growth rate data obtained in the above described reactor. ____________________ * Corresponding author: e-mail: maurizio.masi@polimi.it