Omar Jumaah
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NJ 08854, USA
Yogesh Jaluria
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers-New Brunswick, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA
Gallium nitride (GaN) is an attractive material for manufacturing light emitting diodes (LEDs) due to its wide
band-gap and superb optoelectronic performance. The quality of GaN thin film determines the reliability and
durability of LEDs. Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is a common technique used to
fabricate high-quality GaN thin films. In this paper, GaN growth rate and uniformity in a vertical rotating disk
MOCVD reactor are simulated based on a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model via
ANSYS-FLUENT. Simulation of transport phenomena and chemical kinetics in GaN growth process is
performed with a reduced chemistry model which consists of 17 gas phase and 8 surface species are
participating in 17 gas phase and 17 surface reactions. The influence of operating variables includes susceptor
rotation rate, susceptor temperature, velocity inlet, the reactor pressure, and precursor concentrations V/III
ratio on the GaN growth process is investigated. In the numerical simulation, factors that have a significant
effect on the GaN growth rate and uniformity are identified. The response from simulation data with minimum
error variance estimation is predicated using Kriging method. A surrogate model as a function of these
parameters is generated to predict the factors for optimal growth rate and uniformity. In the final part, multiobjective
optimization using a multi-objective genetic algorithm to generate the Pareto frontier of optimum
growth rate and uniformity of GaN thin films is carried out. It has been shown that TMG flow rate and the
reactor pressure have a significant effect on growth rate and uniformity of GaN thin films. The results
reveal that the proposed optimization formulation can generate Pareto frontier of conflicting objectives, thus
providing reliable solutions for decision makers.