Numerical simulation of chemical downstream etching

Replacement of wet etch processes in microelectronics manufacturing requires the development of new Chemical Downstream Etch (CDE) systems for wafer cleaning and striping steps. CDE reactors consist of an upstream region, in which the plasma is excited and a downstream region where the etching of the wafer occurs. The diffusion-reaction controlled flow through the process chamber in such CDE reactors is a typical example of a low Mach number flow. For a detailed simulation of the process chamber, a finite volume method on unstructured, non-staggered grids has been developed for the solution of two-dimensional low Mach number reacting flows. The conservation law form of the flow equations is discretized in terms of primitive variables. Velocities, pressure, temperature, and mass fractions are defined at the center of the control volume as the dependent variables. An artificial compressibility method is employed so that low Mach number flows can be solved economically. The equations are marched in time using an implicit extrapolation method. (orig.)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: RR 1606(97-19) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman