Authors Accepted Manuscript

Global simulation of the Czochralski silicon crystal

growth in ANSYS FLUENT
Maksims Kirpo

www.elsevier.com/locate/jcrysgro

PII:
DOI:
Reference:

S0022-0248(13)00114-0
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrysgro.2013.02.005
CRYS21421

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Journal of Crystal Growth

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Revised date:
Accepted date:

8 October 2012
14 January 2013
5 February 2013

Cite this article as: Maksims Kirpo, Global simulation of the Czochralski silicon crystal
growth in ANSYS FLUENT, Journal of Crystal Growth, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.jcrysgro.2013.02.005
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Global simulation of the Czochralski silicon crystal

growth in ANSYS FLUENT
Maksims Kirpoa,
a

Bosch Solar Energy AG, Robert-Bosch-Str. 1, 99310 Arnstadt, Germany

Abstract
Silicon crystals for high efficiency solar cells are produced mainly by the
Czochralski (CZ) crystal growth method. Computer simulations of the CZ
process established themselves as a basic tool for optimization of the growth
process which allows to reduce production costs keeping high quality of the
crystalline material. The author shows the application of the general Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code ANSYS FLUENT to solution of the
static two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric global model of the small industrial furnace for growing of silicon crystals with a diameter of 100 mm. The
presented numerical model is self-sufficient and incorporates the most important physical phenomena of the CZ growth process including latent heat
generation during crystallization, crystal-melt interface deflection, turbulent
heat and mass transport, oxygen transport, etc. The demonstrated approach
allows to find the heater power for the specified pulling rate of the crystal but
the obtained power values are smaller than those found in the literature for
the studied furnace. However, the described approach is successfully verified
with the respect to the heater power by its application for the numerical
simulations of the real CZ pullers by Bosch Solar Energy AG.
Keywords: A1. Computer simulation; A1. Turbulent convection; A2.
Czochralski method; B1. Semiconducting Silicon
PACS: 81.10.Aj; 81.10.Fq; 81.05.Cy; 47.27.Eq; 47.27.Te

Maksims.Kirpo@de.bosch.com

Preprint submitted to Journal of Crystal Growth

February 11, 2013

1. Introduction
Current technology of high-efficiency Si solar cells is based mainly on
the CZ grown single crystals of silicon [1]. This technology usually costs
more than fabrication of poly-Si based cells and therefore question of costs
reduction in the CZ production of single crystals and wafers is very important. Economical reasons push producers to grow single crystals from as
large as possible loads of the raw material with the diameters which fit the
standard size of typical solar cell 156156 mm2 . Besides the quality of the
grown crystals (minority carrier lifetime, distribution of the crystallographic
defects, mechanical properties, etc.) should correspond to the requirements
of the solar cell production which puts additional limitations on the technology of the growth process. Trying to reduce costs results in permanent
modernization of the crystal pulling equipment and improvement of the process technology which nowadays is not thought without the global computer
simulations of the heat and mass transport in the whole CZ furnace. The
global model of the conjugate heat and mass transport in the furnace plays
very important role in the CZ process simulation since all further compuations of crystalografic defects and stresses in the crystal as a rule are based
on the temperature and concentration distributions obtained from it. The
2D global simulations are also often used to get the boundary conditions for
steady or transient 3D local models of the melt flow like in [2, 3, 4, 5].
Several companies and institutes have developed specialized codes for
the global simulations of CZ crystal growth. It is worth to mention such
codes (in alphabetical order) as CGSim from STR Group Ltd., CrysMAS/STHAMAS from Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Systems and Device Technology and FEMAG-CZ from FEMAGSoft S. A. which are commercially available for the industry. The offered codes are built specially to
perform global 2D simulations of the CZ process in axisymmetric approximation and usually include coupled solvers for turbulent melt and gas convection
in the rotating geometry; conjugated radiative, convective, conductive and
advective heat transport; release of the latent heat during solidification and
crystal-melt interface deformations. These codes are well tested and intensively used in research and industry. Some typical applications of CGSim can
be found in the following publications [6, 7, 8]; CrysMAS/STHAMAS was
used by Huang for study of several hot-zone designs with application for the
photovoltaic CZ growth [9]; FEMAG-CZ for the CZ simulations was selected
by the authors in [10, 11]. All the mentioned codes offer approximately the
2

same functionality to the end user with the respect to the computations of
the conjugate heat and mass transport in the CZ process, i.e. nevertheless on
the different approaches for grid generation, setup of the model, simulation
of the radiation, numerical schemes, turbulence models, etc. the end user
receives set of results including global distributions of the temperature in the
furnace, flow structure and intensity, solidification interface, required power
of the heating, etc. at the end of simulation.
Application of the FLUENT software for the simulation of the crystal
growth processes has a long history. For example, fluid flow and energy transport in simplified Cz geometry was studied ny Nowak et. al. in [12] where
3D FLUENT model was coupled to the self-developed programm for thermal
radiation analysis. This model included only melt, crystal and gas regions
but was able to prove the importnace of the thermal radiation analysis. Even
earlier Martnez-Tomas and Mu
noz have created the global numerical model
of the CdTe crystal growth process by the Bridgman method in FLUENT
applying the two level strategy: the first level for the whole system and the
second level only for the ampoule [13]. FLUENT was also used by Lan for
3D simulation of floating-zone growth of oxide crystals [14]. Other more recent examples of FLUENT application for simulations of the crystal growth
can be found in [15, 16, 17] and possibly in [18] where the name of the used
software is not clearly given in the text.
The global 2D FLUENT models of CZ furnaces are reported in [19, 20]
where the enthalpy-porosity based approach is used. The 2D global simulations are perfomed for the CZ furnaces with and without CUSP magnetic
field. The obtained numerical results are compared with the results from
the local models where the melt is enclosed in rigid walls having the corresponding temperature profiles taken from the global model and it is found
that the global models which are based on the enthalpy-porosity formulation
underestimate the Taylor-Proudman effect and therefore are not suitable for
monocomponent systems like silicon.
As it is currently known to the author, the global 2D or 3D models where
the crystal-melt interface is treated as the rigid wall and which take into
account the most important mentioned above physical phenomena of the CZ
process and are built in the general CFD codes are not reported. The existing
specialized 2D commercial software for the simulation of the CZ processes is
also not flexible if the user wants to modify existing or implement new mathematical models by himself. It is also could be important to have possiblity
to check numerical results not only by experiment but by the comparison
3

with alternative simulation. Taking into account the above considerations

the author decided to create and verify approach for the CZ crystal growth
computations using the general CFD code ANSYS FLUENT.
2. Modeling approach
Because it is not allowed to open the furnace geometry or the material
properties used by the company to produce the single crystals for the solar
cells, a furnace which is similar to the classic Leybold EKZ 1300 CZ puller [21,
6] is selected for the numerical experiment in ANSYS FLUENT (figure 1).
The model is aligned so that the origin of the right-hand Cartesian coordinate
system is placed at symmetry axis (which also acts as x direction) at the
bottom of the geometry. Axis y in this case is directed to the side and
can be also considered as the radial direction in the appropriate cylindrical
coordinate system. The shape of the quartz crucible is different comparing
to the original geometry since it is not possible to get additional information
about the original experiments and simulations. The positions of the gas
outlets may also not exactly correspond to the cited papers. The material
properties used in the model (table 1) are mostly taken from [6] but heat
capacities and densities are taken from [8] as the former reference does not
provide them for all required materials. The total charge of Si in the system
is about 22 kg.
The studied growth process is characterized by the 2 mm/min pulling
rate. The pulling of the crystal is possible only if the whole furnace is at
the thermal equilibrium. It allows to develop quasi-steady approach where
time dependence of the growth conditions is neglected. 2D axisymmetric
approximation is used to benefit from the symmetry of the studied geometry.
The effects of the crucible and crystal rotation are included both for melt and
gas flows by activation of swirling flow model in FLUENT. The developed
numerical approach allows to obtain physically self-consistent solution taking
into account turbulent melt and gas convection; conjugate heat transport by
radiation, conductivity, convection and advection; latent heat generation and
deformation of the solidification interface; control of the heater power which
corresponds to the required growth velocity using PID algorithm; oxygen
transport model; temperature dependent non-linear properties of materials.

Table 1: Material properties used for simulations [6, 8].

Argon
Molar mass, M (kg/kmol)
Density,
Thermal conductivity, (W/mK)
Heat capacity, Cp (J/kgK)
Dynamic viscosity, (Pas)
Si liquid
Melting temperature, Tm (K)
Reference density, 0 (kg/m3 )
Thermal conductivity, (W/mK)
Heat capacity, Cp (J/kgK)
Emissivity,
Dynamic viscosity, (Pas)
Thermal expansion coefficient, (1/K)
Si solid
Latent heat, L (J/kg)
Density, 0 (kg/m3 )
Thermal conductivity, (W/mK)
Heat capacity, Cp (J/kgK)
Emissivity,
Graphite
Density, 0 (kg/m3 )

40
ideal gas
0.01 + 2.5 105
521
8.466 106 + 5.365 108 T 8.682 1012 T 2
1685
2570
66.5
915
0.3
0.0008
1.44 104
1.8 106
2530

0.32
T
75.0
exp(5.3 104 (T 300))
300
1000
0.7
1950

Thermal conductivity, (W/mK)

105.0

Heat capacity, Cp (J/kgK)

Emissivity,
Felt insulation
Density, 0 (kg/m3 )

500
0.8

T
300

0.3

T
300

0.14

exp(3.5 104 (T 300))

100

Thermal conductivity, (W/mK)

0.022

Heat capacity, Cp (J/kgK)

Emissivity,
Steel
Density, 0 (kg/m3 )
Thermal conductivity, (W/mK)
Heat capacity, Cp (J/kgK)
Emissivity,
5
Molybdenum
Density, 0 (kg/m3 )
Thermal conductivity, (W/mK)
Heat capacity, Cp (J/kgK)
Emissivity,
Quartz

160
0.9
7800
15
600
0.45
10280
10
250
0.18

exp(1.05 103 (T 300))

2.1. Calculation of the meniscus

The simulation approach presented here assumes that all the walls between the geometry parts are rigid. Interaction between the surface tension
of the liquid Si and the gravity introduces bending of the melt surface near
the crystal wall, i.e. the meniscus. The shape of the meniscus usually is found
numerically solving the appropriate Laplace-Young equation, e.g. [22], but
for the crystal with the infinite diameter the analytical expression which is
also used in this paper is known. In this case the Laplace-Young equation
takes the form [23]:
z 00
= gz,
(1)

(1 + z 02 )3/2
where z = 0 is the plane of the melt surface far from the crystal wall where
x = 01 , = 0.7835 N/m is the surface tension and g = 9.81 m/s2 is the
gravitational acceleration. This equation has the following solution [23]:
s
z2
2lc
+ lc 4 2 + x0 ,
(2)
x = lc acosh
z
lc
p
where lc = /g is the capillary constant. Theconstant x0 can be found
from the condition z(x = 0) = h, where h = lc 2 2sin 7 mm is the
meniscus height. The free surface angle with the vertical is = 11 .
2.2. Melt and gas flow
The flow of the melt and gas is governed by the Reynolds-averaged NavierStokes (RANS) equations in a rotating frame which account for Coriolis and
centrifugal forces [24] and express conservation of the mass and momentum.
The Boussinesq approximation is used to account for the buoyancy effects in
the turbulent melt flow. The gas flow is compressible and buoyancy dependent since its density is computed from the ideal gas low.
The turbulent viscosity in both melt and gas regions is computed using
the Spalart-Allmaras one equation turbulence model [25] which is often used
in turbomachinery applications. The model is effectively a low-Reynolds
number model, requiring the good resolution of the viscosity-affected region
of the boundary layer. The default model constants from ANSYS FLUENT
were used [24]. This model is selected due to its simlicity, numerical stability
1

this nomenclature is different to the rest of the paper

and robustness. The numerical results obtained with the Spalart-Allmaras

turbulence models can be used as the initial conditions for more advanced
RANS turbulence models as k or Reynolds stress. The selection of the best
turbulence model for the global simulation of the heat and mass transport
in the CZ process should be based on the experimental verification of the
numerical results and can be a subject of the future work.
The gas is entering the furnace through the mass flow inlet at the top
opening and leaves it through the pressure outlet at the bottom corner of
the vessel (figure 1). The gas inlet flowrate corresponds to 30 SLPM and the
furnace pressure is kept at 2000 Pa as in [6]. The tangential component of the
velocity corresponds to the wall velocities for both gas and melt flows. The
tangential component of the gas flow velocity on the free surface of the melt
is also prescribed and computed from the angular velocity of the crucible
while radial and axial velocity components have no-slip conditions. The gas
flow effect on the melt convection was included through the coupling of shear
stresses:
ug
T
um
= g
+
,
(3)
m
n
n
T
where u is the velocity, is the dynamic viscosity, T is the temperature,
indices m and g are for melt and gas variables but n and for normal

is set to
and surface tangential directions. The Marangoni parameter
T
4
2.5 10 N/Km in all computations.
2.3. Heat transport, Latent heat and deflection of solidification interface
During the solidification process the latent heat QL = LV is released,
where is the density of the crystal, L is the crystallization heat and V
is the solidified volume. The volume grown in the time unit is depending
on the crystallization rate: V = R2 vgr , where R is the radii of the crystal
and vgr is the average crystallization rate. The average crystallization rate
is directly prescribed in the model allowing transportation of energy by the
crystal advection. The latent heat is generated in the first layer of elements
within the crystal as the heat source density q, so the heat transport equation
for the crystal has the form:
Cp (~vgr )T = (T ) + q,

(4)

where Cp is the heat capacity and is the thermal conductivity. The thickness of the first layer of the elements in the crystal is about 100 m, i.e. small,
and such simplification does not deteriorate the solidification interface.
7

The solidification interface initially is flat. During the computations it is

deformed in small steps to correspond to T = Tm = 1685 K isotherm. This
process is iterative and performed only if the triple junction point temperature Ttr is within 0.01 K difference to the melting temperature of silicon
(the author thinks that the selection of such numerical precision for temperature determination is reasonable for the studied phenomena). The mesh
is deformed which causes changing the volumes of elements in both melt
and crystal regions. The heat source density q is accordingly recalculated to
correspond to the latent heat QL for the initially specified growth velocity.
All thermal contacts between the furnace elements are considered as ideal.
The inflow temperature of the gas and the temperature of the outer furnace
walls are set to 300 K. The thickness of the outer walls is set to 5 mm
and the linear temperature distribution along the furnace wall thickness is
assumed. Surface to surface model is used for computation of the radiative
heat exchange.
2.4. Correction of the heater power
The global modeling of the Cz process should include correction of the
heater power to warrant the correspondence of the temperature in the tripple
junction point to the melting temperature of Si. It can be done by implementing incremental PID algorithm [26] modified to the following form:
Pn = Pn1 +kp (Tn Tn1 )+kp ki Tn +kp kd (Tn 2Tn1 +Tn2 ), (5)
where T = Tm Ttr , the bottom index shows the iteration number and the
tuning parameters are kp = 20, ki = 1, and kd = 0. Since we perform steady
computations the above equation (5) does not include the sampling interval
in the integral and derivative actions.
2.5. Oxygen transport model
The oxygen transport model in the melt and gas is based on the work of
Smirnov and Kalaev [27] where empirical dissolution law of quartz crucible
is taken into account. The oxygen is then transported by the melt until it
reaches the free surface where it can evaporate. The oxygen evaporation from
the melt through the free surface is coupled to the oxygen concentration in
the argon which can transport the evaporated oxygen away from the free
surface. The conservation of molar fluxes through the melt free surface and
the mentioned coupling of the oxygen concentration on the melt-gas interface
8

allow to solve for oxygen concentrations in both melt and gas. The amount
of oxygen remaining in the melt below the solidification interface determines
its incorporation into the crystal via segregation process.
The transport of the oxygen in the melt and gas is described by the
diffusion equation. The values of the molecular diffusion coefficients for oxygen concentration in the melt Dm = 5 108 m2 /s and in the gas Dg =
8.626 106 T 1.75 /PAr m2 /s are taken from the more recent paper [8]. Transport equations are solved with the effective diffusion coefficient which accounts for turbulence contribution to the oxygen transport by means of increasing molecular diffusivities by t /Sct where t is the turbulent viscosity
and Sct = 0.9 is the turbulent Schmidt number.
The implemented model can also be extended for solution of carbon transport in the furnace. Corresponding reactions and scalar transport equations
can be taken from [28].
2.6. Solution procedure
The proposed approach is based on the standard pre-, solution and postprocessing tools fromANSYS Inc. (figure 2). The 2D surface geometry is
created and meshed in ANSYS Workbench which allows easy parametrization
of the problem. It means that the position of the crucible and level of the melt
can be recalculated as functions from one parameter cylindrical length of
the crystal. The rest of the geometry and mesh are automatically regenerated
keeping assignments of the boundary and region names which significantly
reduces required effort for model setup in FLUENT.
The model has mainly hexahedral mesh with refined boundary layers (figure 3). The typical size of elements in the melt is about 3 mm while the first
element in the melt boundary layer has thickness only 20 m which warrants
good resolution of the viscous sub-layer and accurate computations of heat
and oxygen transport in the fluid regions. The total number of elements in
the model is about 60000. The mesh dependence study is also performed
and briefly described in the appendix (Appendix A).
The numerical solution of the model is performed in ANSYS FLUENT.
The static solution is obtained first for the assumed power of the heater to
have a good starting condition for the PID algorithm. Afterwards the computation loop is started. The power of the heater is corrected so that the
triple junction temperature is Ttr = 1685.00 0.01 K. When this condition
is fulfilled then the crystal-melt interface is moved to catch Tm = 1685 K
isotherm. The triple junction point is fixed in space while all other points of
9

the solidification interface can move up and down (in x direction). The maximal deflection of the interface point is 1 mm for one correction step. Larger
values of the maximal grid point deflection in one mesh correction step introduced mesh elements with the negative volume during the mesh motion. The
interface correction process can be automated but for these simulations semiautomatic mode is used where the interface correction steps are launched and
controlled manually until the distance between the isotherm and interface is
less than 0.05 mm2 . Every interface correction step requires the adjustment
of the heater power afterwards. Additional interface correction - power adjustment loops are performed if necessary to obtain the required precision
of the interface location. After the last interface correction is completed the
model is allowed to iterate until the converged solution is obtained. Finally
the scalar transport equations are solved to compute oxygen transport in the
furnace. The whole process requires at least 20000 iterations. The parallel work on several crystal positions allows to reduce the time required to
complete the series of simulations. The performance of the approach is also
enhanced by the parallelization of the User Dedined Functions (UDFs). For
example every case presented in the appendix (Appendix A) is computed
with the double precision on the mesh with about 170 thousand elements
using 4 cores of Intel Xeon X5690 3.46 GHz processor on 2 processor workstation (12 cores total) for 4-8 hours depending on the selected turbulence
model to get completely converged solutions under 64-bit Linux OS.
The implementation of the described models, material properties and
boundary conditions in FLUENT requires very intensive use of the UDFs.
Discretisation of the solved equations is of the second order of accuracy and
SIMPLE algorithm is introduced for the pressure correction.
3. Simulation results
The computations are performed for the two defined lengths of the cylindrical part of the grown crystal, i.e. 50 and 150 mm. These crystal positions
(CPs) will be referred further in the text as CP50 and CP150. The crystal
rotation rate crystal is always 20 rpm. The crucible rotation rate crucible is
equal to -1, -5 and -10 rpm and is opposite to the crystal rotation.
2

this value is reasonably selected by the author as the convergence indicator for the
interface corrections

10

The global temperature distributions for crucible = 10 rpm are shown

in the figure 4 for both CPs of the crystal. These global temperature distributions are very similar for different crucible and CPs in terms of general
locations and structure of isotherms. The gas is considered to be transparent
and the heat transport by radiation is dominating at the operating temperatures in the furnace. The cooling of the furnace elements by the gas is
less significant for the heat transport comparing to the thermal radiation.
However, it should always be taken into account in the global simulations
for better agreement between experimental and numerical results. The gas is
heated already in the top part of the vessel but its temperature is still small
comparing to the melting point of silicon when it approaches the surfaces
of the crystal and heat shield. The gas velocity increases to approximately
12.5 m/s at the narrowest gap between the melt free surface and the bottom
of the heat shield and the isotherms are banded accordingly indicating that
the free surface of the melt is effieciently cooled by the gas. The hottest zone
of the heater lies just above its middle height in this configuration. The maximal temperature in the furnace ir about 5 K higher for CP50 which is also
indicated by 0.5 kW larger power of the heater. The averaged over crucible
power of the heater found during computations is about 55.5 kW for CP50
and 55.0 kW for CP150. These values are smaller than the measured power
of 62 kW reported in experiment [21] and the agreement is not satisfactory
but this discrepancy is acceptable since all the details of the experiment and
the external boundary conditions are not known to the author. Moreover
the demonstrated approach was compared with one of the mentioned above
specialized commercial codes on the bigger geometries used by Bosch Solar
Energy AG and the differences between the obtained powers were within
1% range for the same parameters. From the physical point of view the temperature distributions obtained in this study (figure 4) are not contradictory
and taking into account the above remark about the comparison of results
with the other code it may be concluded that the thermal regime of the whole
furnace can be reproduced by the model in FLUENT.
In general the viscous melt flow is three-dimensional. The rotation of the
crucible is often used to homogenize temperature and dopant distribution in
the melt and create the best conditions for the growth of the crystal. Usually
crucible rotation rates are in the range from 8 to 20 rpm in industrial CZ
processes. The crystal-crucible rotation rates are determined by the process
parameters and stage of the growth process. Large crucible rotation rates
warrant that the melt is rotating almost as a solid body due to its inertia
11

and its primary flow can be considered as angular. Therefore the flow in
xy plane can be considered as the secondary. The influence of the crucible
rotation rate on this secondary flow and temperature distribution in the melt
is illustrated in figures 5 and 6.
If the crucible rotation rate is small crucible = 1 rpm then the thermal
convection plays more important role for the heat transport in the melt
(figures 5(a) and 6(a)). The secondary flow pattern is formed mainly by
the largest dominating convective vortex which transports the heat from the
hottest bottom corner of the crucible to the free surface region of the melt
due to the buoyancy. The temperature difference in the melt is only 30 K in
this case which shows that the melt mixing by the buoyancy is more effective
if crucible = 1 rpm than in two other cases with the higher crucible rotation
rates.
If the crucible rotation rate is increased to 5 or 10 rpm (figures 5(b),
5(c), 6(b), 6(c)) then the thermal convection is effectively suppressed by
the melt rotation and the buoyant vortex is locked near the crucible wall
while the Taylor-Proudman vortex below the crystal is better expressed. The
temperature difference in the melt becomes by 5-10 K larger comparing to
crucible = 1 rpm case and indicating that the heat transport mechanism in
the melt is switching from the thermal convection to the thermal conduction
if the crucible rotation rate is increased. It can be also clearly seen from the
structure pattern of temperature isotherms. The experimental data on the
temperature distribution for crucible = 5 rpm can be found in [29] where
the temperature difference in the melt is found to be at least 34 K for the
smaller growth velocity 1.6 mm/min.
The intensity of the secondary flow can reach 4-5 cm/s for crucible =
1 rpm case in the buoyancy driven vortex and is reduced approximately
by two times in the other studied cases. This well correlates to the better
homogenisation of the melt temperature if the rotation rate of the crucible
is small. The maximal turbulent viscosity t value is about 0.34 Pas for
crucible = 1 rpm. The turbulent viscosity is increasing with the rotation
rate of the crucible and its maximal values for crucible = 5 and crucible =
10 rpm are respectively 0.47 and 0.79 Pas. Such increase in the turbulent
viscosity can explain the drop of the temperature difference (figures 5(c)
and 6(c)) for crucible = 10 rpm in comparison to crucible = 5 rpm,
i.e. the heat transport is enhanced by the turbulent mixing.
The prediction of the interface deflection is made based only on the
isotherm T = 1685 K. The resulting interface shapes show rather strong
12

deflection of the crystal-melt interface by more than 10 mm for the CP50

(figure 7) and by more than 11 mm for the CP150 (figure 8). The interface
deflection computed in [6] for the CP50 was below 8 mm. Such more than
20% discrepancy in the computational results can be explained by possibly
different interface deflection models and computational algorithms used by
the authors. Anyway both computational results require carefull validation
by experiment which is currently not possible for the studied geometry. The
shape of the crystal-melt interfaces is convex in all cases and its dependence
on the crucible rotation rate is not linear since the maximal interface deflection for crucible = 10 rpm is smaller than for crucible = 5 rpm but the
smallest maximal interface deflection is shown for crucible = 1 rpm. The
selected computational algorithm of the interface seems to be not perfect.
The future interface correction models built in FLUENT can be based on
the Stefan condition.
The concentration of the oxygen in the melt at r = 0 just below the solidification interface is shown in the figure 9 for both CPs. Smaller rotation rate
of the crucible results in smaller oxygen concentration at the solidification
interface and hence in the crystal. This reduction can achieve 25% if crucible
is decreased to 1 rpm from 10 rpm. The oxygen content in the crystal is also
reduced towards its tail part because of the smaller contact surface between
the melt and the crucible which is very good seen for crucible = 5 rpm.
The decrease of the oxygen concentration for other studied crucible rotation
rates, especially for 1 rpm, is less expressed. Such behaviour of the oxygen
concentration at the crystal-melt interface indicates that it can be efficiently
controlled by changing the structure of the secondary flow. Overall the question of the oxygen content in the crystal and its dependence on the process
parameters requires additional separate numerical research and experimental
verification which is not the main subject of the presented study.
The results about the oxygen concentration which are described above
show 30-50% larger values of the concentration comparing to the reference
experimental results given in [30]. Moreover the reference [30] shows slight
increase in the oxygen concentration in the melt at the begining of the cylindrical part. Such significant discrepancy in the results can possibly be explained by the big difficulties which always present performing measurements
of chemical composition at the high temperatures. The same reference shows
FTIR measurements of the oxygen concentration in the crystal which values
are larger than those measured in the melt. It means the the segregation
coefficient of the oxygen is larger than unity. However, the suggested value
13

of the equilibrium segregation coefficinet of oxygen found in [31] is 0.80.1

and the oxygen concentration in the crystal should be less than its concentration in the melt. Taking into account these considerations and the fact
that FTIR can detect only interstitial oxygen (which of couse has the largest
presence in the crystal) one can conclude that the computed here values of
the oxygen concentration are reasonable.
4. Conclusions
The possibility of the general CFD software application for the global
simulation of the comprehensive multiphysical CZ growth process is demonstrated by the creation of the robust parallel 2D axisymmetric model in
ANSYS FLUENT. The created model includes the most important physical phenomena of the CZ process and can be used for intensive studies of
mass and heat transport in industrial applications. However, the problem
of the solidification interface calculations is not yet satisfactorily solved and
the numerical approach needs to be updated. The demonstrated results numerically reproduce well known effects of crucible rotation rate influence on
the secondary flow structure in the melt and oxygen distribution in the crystal: the oxygen concentration decreases with decreasing the crucible rotation
rate. It is shown that the selection of the turbulence model does not effect the
global heat transport much with the respect to the heater power. However,
the selection of the turbulence model is crucial for the correct description of
the mass transport in the melt. The demonstrated approach allows to find
the heater power for the specified pulling rate of the crystal but the obtained
power values are smaller than those found in the literature for the studied
furnace. However, the described approach is successfully verified with the
respect to the heater power by its application for the numerical simulations
of the real CZ pullers by Bosch Solar Energy AG. The described computational approach can also be adapted for the global 3D simulations of the
CZ growth process in ANSYS FLUENT.
Acknoledgement
The author would like to thank Viktor Osinniy and Jens Neusel for proofreading and correcting the manuscript.

14

Appendix A. Mesh and turbulence model dependence study

The mesh and turbulence model dependence study was performed additionally to demonstrate that the published computational results are numerically reliable with the respect to the main heater power. The numerical grid
was remeshed to about 170 thousand elements where melt and heater regions
had more dense element spacing (the number of the elements in the radial
direction for the heater is 34, the maximal size of the element in the melt is
about 1 mm). crucible = 10 rpm and CP50 case was selected for this study.
Three different turbulence models were used to illustrate the importance of
the turbulence model selection: Spalart-Allmaras, RNG k and Reynolds
Stress [24]. The last two models included full buoyancy effects in the model
equations. All other parameters of the numerical models were the same for
all performed computations. Numerical solution with the Spalart-Allmaras
turbulence model was obtained starting simulation from the rest and this
solution was used as the initial condition for two other cases.
Table A.2: Main heater powers and temperature differences in the melt depending on the
mesh and selection of the turbulence model (CP50, crucible = 10 rpm).

Turbulence model
Spalart-Allmaras
Spalart-Allmaras
RNG k
Reynolds stress

Mesh P, kW
normal 55.183
fine
55.176
fine
56.372
fine
55.773

T , K
36.18
35.77
55.51
45.58

The results of this additional study are summarized in the table A.2.
It can be seen that despite the different turbulent models and meshes the
computed power of the heater converges to approximately the same value.
It is also can be seen that the global heat balance is almost not influenced
by the selection of the turbulence model for the melt and gas flows in the
global simulation. However, the temperature difference in the melt is very
significantly affected by the turbulence model: the temperature differences
in the melt can reach tens of Kelvins if different turbulence models are used.
The author suggests that the selection of the most appropriate turbulence
model for 2D global simulations of the CZ growth process should be based
on results comparison with the experimental temperature measurements in
the melt.

15

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19

20

Figure 1: Geometry and regions of the studied CZ system.

Figure 2: Simulation workflow.

21

Figure 3: Close view on the mesh where boundary layers in the gas and melt are shown.

22

Figure 4: Global temperature distributions in the CZ puller for 50 and 150 mm of the
grown cylindrical part of the crystal (crystal = 20 rpm, crucible = 10 rpm).

23

(a) crystal = 20 rpm, crucible = 1 rpm

(b) crystal = 20 rpm, crucible = 5 rpm

(c) crystal = 20 rpm, crucible = 10 rpm

Figure 5: Normalized secondary flow velocity vectors ~v /|~v | (left) and temperature distributions (right) in the melt for 50 mm length of the cylindrical crystal part.

24

(a) crystal = 20 rpm, crucible = 1 rpm

(b) crystal = 20 rpm, crucible = 5 rpm

(c) crystal = 20 rpm, crucible = 10 rpm

Figure 6: Normalized secondary flow velocity vectors ~v /|~v | (left) and temperature distributions (right) in the melt for 150 mm length of the cylindrical crystal part.

25

Figure 7: Calculated crystal-melt interface deflection for different crucible rotation rates,
CP50.

26

Figure 9: Concentration of oxygen in the melt at r = 0 just below the solidification

interface.

27

2D axisymmetric global model for CZ process simulation is created in ANSYS

FLUENT
The results show some discrepancy to literature values with respect to the found
heater power
The found heater power is almost independent on the selected turbulence model
The computed temperature difference in the melt is strongly influenced by the
turbulence model
This computational approach can be adapted for the global 3D simulations of the CZ
process