Selective nucleation of silicon clusters in CVD

Abstract
A nucleation model is developed that includes chemical etching of atoms as an additional loss process besides thermal dissociation that competes with the process of atom addition in forming a cluster. The model has the proper qualitative features to describe observations of the evolution of cluster formation on amorphous silicon substrates in the low pressure CVD of a mixture of SiH2Cl2/HCl/H2.