The epitaxial growth of silicon in horizontal reactors†

Abstract

A theory is proposed for the epitaxial growth of silicon in horizontal reactors operating under conditions which result in a large proportion of the chlorosilane being converted into silicon. The transport equation is solved for the case where the equilibrium reactions are: by assuming that the gas velocity profile is a constant over a plane perpendicular to the direction of gas flow, and that the temperature is everywhere constant in the reaetor. The resulting expression for the growth rate is compared with the experimental values with trichlorosilane as the source of silicon, and it is shown that reasonable agreement obtains.