5.2 Chemical vapor deposition

Introduction

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a deposition process where chemical precursors are transported in the vapor phase to decompose on a heated substrate to form a film. The films may be epitaxial, polycrystalline or amorphous depending on the materials and reactor conditions. CVD has become the major method of film deposition for the semiconductor industry due to its high throughput, high purity, and low cost of operation. CVD is also commonly used in optoelectronics applications, optical coatings, and coatings of wear resistant parts.

CVD has many advantages over physical vapor deposition (PVD) processes such as molecular beam evaporation and sputtering. Firstly, the pressures used in CVD allow coating of three dimensional structures with large aspect ratios. Since evaporation processes are very directional, PVD processes are typically line of sight depositions that may not give complete coverage due to shadowing from tall structures. Secondly, high precursor flow rates in CVD give deposition rates several times higher than PVD. Also, the CVD reactor is relatively simple and can be scaled to fit several substrates. Ultra-high vacuum is not needed for CVD and changes or additions of precursors is an easy task. Furthermore, varying evaporation rates make stoichiometry hard to control in physical deposition. While for CVD stoichiometry is more easily controlled by monitoring flow rates of precursors. Other advantages of CVD include growth of high purity films and the ability to fabricate abrupt junctions.

There are, however, some disadvantages of CVD that make PVD more attractive for some applications. High deposition temperatures for some CVD processes (often greater than 600 °C) are often unsuitable for structures already fabricated on substrates. Although with some materials, use of plasma-enhanced CVD or metal-organic precursors may reduce deposition temperatures. Another disadvantage is that CVD precursors are often hazardous or toxic and the by-products of these precursors may also be toxic. Therefore extra steps have to be taken in the handling of the precursors and in the treatment of the reactor exhaust. Also, many precursors for CVD, especially the metal-organics, are relatively expensive. Finally, the CVD process contains a large number of parameters that must be accurately and reproducibly optimized to produce good films.

Kinetics of cvd

A normal CVD process involves complex flow dynamics since gases are flowing into the reactor, reacting, and then by-products are exhausted out of the reactor. The sequence of events during a CVD reaction are shown in [link] and as follows:

1. Precursor gases input into the chamber by pressurized gas lines.
2. Mass transport of precursors from the main flow region to the substrate through the boundary layer ( [link] a);
3. Adsorption of precursors on the substrate (normally heated) ( [link] b).
4. Chemical reaction on the surface ( [link] c)
5. Atoms diffuse on the surface to growth sites.
6. Desorption of by-products of the reactions ( [link] d).
7. Mass transport of by-products to the main flow region ( [link] e).