Accurate estimation of radiative and convective losses in a multizone RTP reactor

We have developed a methodology aimed at accurately determining the various forms of energy transfer(convective loss, radiative loss and absorption of lamp energy by the wafer)occurring in any advanced RTP system, based on basic system identification experiments and simple 3-dimensional physical model depicting the heat transfer processes. The identification experiments help in estimating the uncertain system dependent factors which characterize the various forms of energy transfer, which may be otherwise difficult to calculate on pure theoretical basis. This methodology forms the basic building block of our effort to develop a tool which can predict the temperature distribution across the wafer in a realistic way. This tool can be used both as a wafer temperature control algorithm in any advanced RTP system by incorporating more accurate system impedance parameters(convective and radiative loss) as well as by end user to calculate the required power level settings to various lamp zones to attain reasonable temperature uniformity for a RTP system which does not have a dynamic control.