Buoyancy and Marangoni Effects on Horizontal Ribbon Growth

TL;DR

This study uses unsteady simulations to analyze how buoyancy and Marangoni effects induce chaotic flow, causing surface corrugations, thickness variations, and growth rate fluctuations in horizontal ribbon growth of silicon.

Contribution

The paper introduces detailed unsteady simulation results revealing the chaotic flow dynamics driven by Marangoni and buoyancy effects in HRG, aligning with experimental observations.

Findings

Chaotic flow causes surface corrugations and thickness nonuniformities.

Flow oscillations lead to measurable growth rate variations.

Surface wavelength and amplitude decrease with increased surface tension sensitivity.

Abstract

Unsteady simulations of horizontal ribbon growth of silicon were performed that included both Marangoni and buoyancy effects. A chaotic flow was observed dominated by strong Marangoni-driven jets emerging near the local temperature minima on the free surface. This oscillatory flow caused the vertical position of the leading edge of the sheet to fluctuate, resulting in corrugations on the top surface of the ribbon. Additionally, larger amplitude and wavelength nonuniformities appeared on the bottom of the sheet resulting in a sheet with varying thickness. Lastly, the unsteady flow caused temporal variations in growth rate, which when converted to distance using the pull speed, matched the wavelengths observed on the top surface. All three of these phenomena have been observed experimentally: The median of the surface wavelengths and amplitudes decreased with increasing temperature sensitivity of surface tension and had wavelengths on the same order as experiments for a sensitivity corresponding to uncontaminated silicon. Oscillations in growth rate have been observed using passive antimony demarcation and thickness variations have been measured after sheet removal. These results indicate that the chaotic flow makes producing thin uniform sheets using HRG challenging.