Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulation of Homogeneous Nucleation of Hydrogenated Silicon Particles during Silane Decomposition

摘要

Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations are being used to model the homogeneous chemical nucleation of particles during thermal CVD of silicon from silane. The evolution of an individual silicon-hydrogen cluster is followed as it isomerizes and, eventually, disintegrates or grows. The methodology for these simulations is described. The efficiency of these simulation has recently been substantially improved, allowing us to conduct large numbers of simulations and extract meaningful results for averaged quantities such as the probability of cluster growth from one size to another. The observed results on cluster growth probabilities under different reaction conditions and effective rate constants that are averaged over an ensemble of cluster isomers are presented.