Hot-Wall Furnace Heating

Modeling of Semiconductor Process Equipment

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

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

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

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

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

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