Arbitrary-pressure chemical vapor deposition modeling using direct simulation Monte Carlo with nonlinear surface chemistry

We present a methodology for simulating chemical vapor deposition (CVD) which uses the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method to capture gaseous phase transport in a wide Knudsen (Kn) range. This work bridges different CVD simulation methods developed for the Navier–Stokes (Kn→0) and ballistic (Kn→∞) regimes. Our methodology incorporates a nonlinear surface chemistry model as well as a level set based profile evolution formulation which accurately captures complex boundary evolution, and is capable of accurately predicting surface growth for arbitrary complex geometries and surface chemistry for a wide range of Knudsen numbers. The proposed approach is validated by comparing its predictions to existing numerical results in the ballistic (Kn→∞) and diffusive (Kn≪1) regimes.