Determination of the gas-flow patterns inside the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition system, using computational fluids dynamics software (fluent)

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics is the analysis of a system involving fluid flow, heat transfer and associated phenomena such as chemical reactions by means of a computer-based simulation. The simulations in this study are performed using (CFD) software package FLUENT. The mixture of two gases (Silane gas (SiH4) and Hydrogen gas (H2)) are delivered into the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition system (HWCVD) with the two deposited substrates (glass and Silicon). This process is performed by the solar cells group of the Physics department at the University of the Western Cape. In this thesis, the simulation is done using a CFD software package FLUENT, to model the gas-flow patterns inside the HWCVD system. This will show how the gas-flow patterns are affected by the varying temperature of the heater in each simulation performed in this study under a constant pressure of 60μBar of the system.