Susceptor honing and contact stress in Si epitaxy

Susceptor honing changes the surface morphology of the pocket. The shape of nodule changes from ball-like to truncated-conic to disk-like with increasing extent of honing. This alters the stress profile at local contact points across the wafer. In this work, the influence of susceptor honing on nodule shape and induced wafer damage is studied. The pressure distribution at the contact spot is calculated using a model involving an elastic half-plane and a flat punch with rounded corner. The predicted pressure profile is compared with the experimentally observed wafer damage before and after honing.