Coupled heat transfer and fluid dynamics modeling of high-temperature SiC solution growth

Despite its real advantages compared to seeded sublimation growth, SiC solution growth has never given convincing results. The difficulty of stabilizing the growth front, and thus avoiding any polycrystal formation results from a poor description and understanding of the coupled phenomena that occur in the crucible. This paper addresses the coupled heat transfer and fluid dynamic modeling of the SiC solution growth process, with special attention being paid to the different convective flows in the liquid. It is demonstrated that both Marangoni and electromagnetic convections have to be avoided. The configuration where the flow patterns in front of the crystal are driven only by crystal rotation, insures the most stable growth front. The correlation between calculated results and experiments is presented and a 3C-SiC wafer grown by the optimized process is shown. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.