Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Chemical Engineering (MSChE)

Department

Chemical Engineering

First Advisor

Daniel Coronell

Second Advisor

Adam Notte

Third Advisor

Allen Holder

Abstract

A hybrid scheme is used to model the vapor phase deposition of thin films at the feature scale. The transport of the chemical species to the substrate surface is modeled with a Collisionless Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. The Level Set Method is used to model the growth of the thin-film on the substrate. The convergence criteria for these methods were not found in literature.

The governing equations for the Level Set Method are, in general, non-linear partial differential equations. The coupling of the DSMC Method with the Level Set Method results in a set of non-Gaussian stochastic non-linear partial differential equations. Developing general convergence criteria proved exceedingly difficult, and only qualitative results are presented to support our convergence criteria. Simulation results are in qualitative agreement with experiments and other results from literature.

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