Film Growth from Particle Raytracing: A Simulation Method for Vapor Deposition Processes with Changing Surface Topographies

Abstract

We present a numerical method for the simulation of vapor deposition processes in complex 3D microstructures, which couples a raytracing-based particle Monte Carlo transport model with Level Set methods for thin film growth. Through the incorporation of different particle-surface interaction models, our method models a wide range of deposition techniques, including Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), Chemical Vapor Deposition and Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). We demonstrate our method on trench filling with a two-step copper resputter PVD process and a model ALD process.