A study on the non-linear surface reaction model for the GaAs film growth during MOCVD process

GaAs film growth process from trimethylgallium(TMGa) and tertiary-butylarsine(TBAs) using a horizontal MOCVD reactor was numerically studied to explain the experimental result that the decreasing surface reaction rate as the increasing partial pressure of group III species. Using the non-linear model based on the Langmuir isotherm which considers the adsorption and desorption of molecules, film deposition over the entire reactor scale was predicted by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with the aid of the parameters obtained from the selective area growth (SAG) technique. CFD Results using the non-linear surface reaction model with the parameters determined from the SAG experiments predicted too high film growth rate compared to the measured values at the downstream region where the temperature was decreased abruptly. The pairs of (k_sⁿ, K) from the numerical simulations was (2.52× 10^-6 mol/m²/s, 1.6× 10 ⁵m³/mol), whereas the experimentally determined was (3.58×10^-5 mol/m²/s, 6.9×10⁵m ³/mol).