Effect of operation parameters on fines formation during thermal decomposition of silane

This work presents a systematic numerical investigation of the effects of the operation parameters on silane pyrolysis in a chemical vapour deposition (CVD) reactor. A detailed chemical kinetic model of fines nucleation was coupled with the fluid flow, heat and mass transfer model. The commercial computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software FLUENT was used to predict the silane decomposition and fines formation. The effects of total reaction pressure, wall temperature, inlet gas composition, inlet gas velocity and specific surface area on the silane conversion and the fines formation have been investigated. The model was verified by comparing the simulated fines formation with the experimental data in the open literature. Results show that the total reaction presssure, inlet silane concentration and the wall temperature have vital effects on the fines formation, while the inlet gas velocity and the specific surface area have only influence in a certain range.