Investigation of a Simplified Mechanism Model for Prediction of Gallium Nitride Thin Film Growth through Numerical Analysis

Abstract

A numerical procedure was performed to simplify the complicated mechanism of an epitaxial thin-film growth process. In this study, three numerical mechanism models are presented for verifying the growth rate of the gallium nitride (GaN) mechanism. The mechanism models were developed through rate of production analysis. All of the results can be compared in one schematic diagram, and the differences among these three mechanisms are pronounced at high temperatures. The simplified reaction mechanisms were then used as input for a two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics code FLUENT, enabling the accurate prediction of growth rates. Validation studies are presented for two types of laboratory-scale reactors (vertical and horizontal). A computational study including thermal and flow field was also performed to investigate the fluid dynamic in those reactors. For each study, the predictions agree acceptably well with the experimental data, indicating the reasonable accuracy of the reaction mechanisms.