Simulation of the growth of CVD films

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the preferred method of manufacture for solid films used in many industrially important thin and thick film applications. Requirements for the physical, mechanical and electrical properties of these films are becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, and deposition morphology plays an important role in this regard. Recently, we proposed a continuum model describing the evolution of a gassolid interface during atmospheric pressure CVD (Viljoen er al., 1994). A linear stability analysis (LSA) was used to determine the effect of reactor conditions on planar growth stability. The present paper discusses numerical solution of this model, and uses simulation examples to illustrate interface evolution under typical deposition conditions and from arbitrary initial interface shapes