A Photothermal Aerosol Synthesis Reactor for Production of Semiconductor Nanoparticlcs and Investigation of Nanoparticle Nucleation and Growth

摘要

Particulate contamination is the leading source of yield loss in microelectronics manufacturing. As feature sizes shrink, particles that are nucleated within the processing environment are becoming the leading source of this contamination. To control the homogeneous nucleation of particles while maintaining high deposition rates and reactant utilization in CVD processing, we must understand the nucleation process. Intentional synthesis of semiconductor nanopartieles is also desirable due to the unique electronic, optical, and mechanical properties of nanopartieles and nanostructured materials. , We have constructed a laser-driven aerosol synthesis reactor for preparing nanopartieles of controlled concentration and size distribution from vapor phase molecular precursors in the absence of CVD on surfaces. This allows us to investigate homogeneous particle nucleation in the same chemical systems that are used for thermal CVD, and to prepare particles of various materials using precursor chemistries that have been developed for CVD processing. This reactor is similar to that originally developed by Cannon and co-workers [1]. A key feature of our reactor system is on-line characterization of particle concentration. and size distribution using a scanning mobility particle spectrometer (SMPS), which allows us to rapidly investigate the dependence of these quantities on reactor conditions.