Atomistic modeling of epitaxial growth of semiconductor materials

The epitaxial growth of semiconductors is a very important step for the processing of microelectronic devices. Solid Phase Epitaxial Regrowth (SPER) is involved in both the recrystallization of amorphous silicon and germanium areas. Selective epitaxial growth (SEG) is routinely used in manufacturing modern 3D devices like finFETs, raised source/drain transistors, gate-all-around transistors, etc. In this work, lattice kinetic Monte Carlo modeling is used as the main tool for the modeling and simulation of epitaxial growth in IV and III-V based materials. This is done by detecting particular local configurations at the interfaces, and assigning local growth rates depending on such configurations. This simple idea is used to identify recrystallization planes or to compute different formation energies for the trapping, detrapping and migration of atoms. Introduction of defects is also possible by allowing the formation of twins and small defective areas. We will show different cases where our model is used, namely: SPER and defect formation of Si, and we will explain how the models can be extended to simulate the epitaxial growth of III-V materials and to obtain the different facet formation and growth kinetics. All these cases are compared with relevant experimental results from the literature to provide an assessment of their current capabilities but also possible limitations.