Analysis of heat transfer in a chemical vapor deposition reactor: an eigenfunction expansion solution approach

A numerical solution procedure is developed to solve a model for the steady-state gas velocity and temperature distributions in a low-pressure chemical vapor deposition reactor. The gas velocity and three-dimensional temperature fields are both represented in terms of globally defined trial functions; the gas temperature field is discretized using a combined collocation/eigenfunction expansion technique. The enthalpy flux across wafer/gas boundary is calculated explicitly and is found to vary significantly as a function of wafer position. An average heat transfer coefficient is computed from the spatially resolved gas temperature fields and is compared to typical radiative heat transfer rates in these systems. The convergence properties of the discretization method developed are also discussed in the context of quantifying solution accuracy. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.