Engineering Research Equipment Grant: Three-Dimensional Video Animation and Imaging for Crystal Growth and Thin Film Research

该设备将主要用于正在进行的硅单晶连续Czochralski （CCZ）晶体生长和用于VLSI/ULSI电路制造的薄膜形成的研究。此外，它们还可用于磷化铟单晶的液体包封式奇克拉尔斯基生长研究和基础熔融/凝固研究。计算研究和工业晶体拉杆的全尺寸实验表明，除特殊情况外，CCZ生长过程的速度场和温度场本质上是三维的和振荡的。为了了解CCZ熔体流动和固体球团在旋转熔体池中熔化的物理现象，并检查工艺参数对生长条件的影响，需要对场变量进行三维可视化和成像。拟议的视频摄影和图像处理设备在适当软件的帮助下，可以在现有SUN工作站上完成这项任务。由计算结果生成的生长过程视频动画可用于控制参数影响的理论研究以及设计新的实验室和工业实验。这项研究的扩展范围将有助于更快地开发这种CCZ技术的商业应用。如果能更好地理解晶体生长过程，就有可能以更快的速度生长出更完美的晶体，从而以更低的成本生产出更好的器件。

9310649 Prasad The equipment will primarily be used for ongoing research on continuous Czochralski (CCZ) crystal growth of silicon single crystals and thin film formation for VLSI/ULSI circuit fabrication. In addition, they may also help in conducting research on liquid encapsulated Czochralski growth of indium phosphide single crystals and in basic melting/solidification research. Computational research and full scale experiments in an industrial crystal puller have demonstrated that the velocity and temperature fields of CCZ growth process are inherently three dimensional and oscillatory except under special circumstances. To understand the physical phenomena underlying the CCZ melt flow and melting of solid pellets when dropped in a rotating pool of melt, and to examine the effect of process parameters on growth conditions, three dimensional visualization and imaging of field variables is necessary. The proposed video photography and image processing equipment, with the help of appropriate software, can perform this task on existing SUN workstations. The video animation of growth processes produced from the computational results, can be used for a theoretical study of the effect of governing parameters as well as for designing new laboratory and industrial experiments. The expanded scope of this research will help in faster development of this CCZ technique for commercial applications. If the crystal growth process can be understood better, it may be possible to grow more perfect crystals at faster rates, resulting in better devices at lower cost.