Epitaxial Systems for III‐V and III‐Nitride MOVPE

Summary

Metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) is one of the most hardware‐dependent techniques in semiconductor technology. This chapter shows a block diagram of an MOVPE tool. Besides the reactor, an MOVPE tool is composed of a gas‐blending system where precursors are mixed with carrier gases for injection into the reactor, and an exhaust system that not only conducts gases from the reactor but also is responsible for maintaining pressure in the reactor. The chapter describes typical engineering solutions in these systems. In the beginning, the effect of the appearance of standard tools with much better engineering than that of typical homemade systems was clearly positive. As the result of hard competition, most of the market is controlled by two companies: AIXTRON and Veeco. TNSC is a third power, popular in Japan. The chapter describes some of the reactors for MOVPE of III‐V materials and III‐N materials offered by these main players.