Convection and chemistry effects in CVD: A 3-D analysis for silicon deposition

The computational fluid dynamics code FLUENT has been adopted to simulate the entire rectangular-channel-like (3-D) geometry of an experimental CVD reactor designed for Si deposition. The code incorporated the effects of both homogeneous (gas phase) and heterogeneous (surface) chemistry with finite reaction rates of important species existing in silane dissociation. The experiments were designed to elucidate the effects of gravitationally-induced buoyancy-driven convection flows on the quality of the grown Si films. This goal is accomplished by contrasting the results obtained from a carrier gas mixture of H2/Ar with the ones obtained from the same molar mixture ratio of H2/He, without any accompanying change in the chemistry. Computationally, these cases are simulated in the terrestrial gravitational field and in the absence of gravity. The numerical results compare favorably with experiments. Powerful computational tools provide invaluable insights into the complex physicochemical phenomena taking place in CVD reactors. Such information is essential for the improved design and optimization of future CVD reactors

Conductivity of Silicon Inversion Layers: comparison with and without in-plane magnetic field

A detailed comparison is presented of the temperature dependence of the conductivity of dilute, strongly interacting electrons in two-dimensional silicon inversion layers in the metallic regime in the presence and in the absence of a magnetic field. We show explicitly and quantitatively that a magnetic field applied parallel to the plane of the electrons reduces the slope of the conductivity versus temperature curves to near zero over a broad range of electron densities extending from $n_c$ to deep in the metallic regime where the high field conductivity is on the order of $10 e^2/h$. The strong suppression (or "quenching") of the metallic behavior by a magnetic field sets an important constraint on theory.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure