Hot-Wall Furnace Heating

1. Hot-Wall Furnace Heating Modeling of Semiconductor Process Equipment

2. Introduction • Furnace reactors are used in the semiconductor industry for layer growth and annealing • The susceptor is heated by a RF coil to high temperatures • A uniform distribution of the temperature at the wafer region is crucial for controlled and reproducible process steps • This model investigates the temperature in a hot-wall furnace reactor used for silicon carbide growth

3. Model Definition – Geometry • Symmetry can be used to cut the 3D geometry in half twice • The graphite susceptor is surrounded by a graphite felt insulation, a quartz tube, and the RF coil

4. Model Definition • This is a multiphysics model, solving an electromagnetic part and one thermal part • The electromagnetic part solves for the magnetic vector potential, A, at a fixed frequency • The thermal part solves for temperature, T, and radiation • The radiation fully controls the thermal flux between the susceptor and the quartz tube

5. Results • The temperature on the quartz tube has a maximum of about 900 K, which may be a bit too high

6. Results • The heating cycle takes about one hour, and with a power of about 10 kW the temperature at the center of the wafer reaches almost 2300 K

7. Results • A surface plot of the wafer reveals the nonuniformity in temperature at the end of the heating cycle, which is almost 150 K