Parallel Performance Studies for a Numerical Simulator of Atomic Layer Deposition

Abstract

During the manufacture of integrated circuits, a process called atomic layer deposition (ALD) is used to deposit a uniform seed layer of solid material on the surface of a silicon wafer. ALD consists of several steps in one cycle, with each cycle repeated thousands of times, involving reactions between two gaseous species, which adsorb, desorb, and react at the wafer surface. Depending on the gases chosen, however, the process may have unintended results, necessitating a computer simulation to understand the effects. ALD can be modeled on the molecular level by a system of linear Boltzmann equations as transport model, coupled with a general, non-linear surface reaction model, together called the kinetic transport and reaction model (KTRM) [3, 4]