Chemical reaction engineering in the design of CVD reactors

The current status of modeling on CVD processes to produce thin films is su mmarized in this review. The experimental methodologies for extracting the essential chemistry in CVD reactors had been developed to efficiently desig n CVD reactors. Tubular wall deposition method provides information on the rate limiting step of the deposition process and the rate constants. Molecu lar size of film forming species can be estimated from the deposition rate profile in the tubular reactor if the process is limited by the gas phase d iffusion. Microcavity-deposition method provides the tool to analyze the su rface reactions. The microcavity-deposition method can be combined with mac rocavity-deposition method to extract the important reaction pathways like as the intermediate deposition. The use of computer chemistry is also usefu l in detecting key reactions and it may be used to construct new deposition chemistry. The computer fluid dynamics coupled with the chemistries obtain ed from these approaches will be a powerful tool to design CVD reactors. (C ) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.