Kinetic Monte Carlo study of metal organic chemical vapor deposition growth dynamics of GaN thin film at microscopic level

Group III nitrides, especially gallium nitride (GaN), have many applications. The materials are usually grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technology. By combining the computational fluid dynamics and kinetic Monte Carlo method, we present a multiscale modeling of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and molecular dynamics to study the chemical and physical growth process of GaN in a standard MOCVD reactor, which shows a general agreement with experimental results. The theoretical model thus provides us with a fundamental guideline for optimizing GaN MOCVD growth at the microscopic level. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.