Long term control of the substrate temperature in production scale MOVPE reactors is the most significant issue effecting yields in highly temperature sensitive epitaxial growth processes. Recent advances in non-contact emissivity compensated pyrometry wafer temperature measurements have allowed the development of a novel multi-wafer (6x2") rotating disc MOVPE reactor with real time substrate temperature control. With this system, the substrate temperature is a directly controlled process variable, in contrast to some conventional MOVPE systems which use thermocouples for process temperature control. In addition to controlling the absolute temperature of the substrates, the temperature uniformity across the substrates is also controlled by pyrometry. This provides for a uniform temperature (+/- 1.5 degreesC) across the substrates independent of the flow conditions within the reactor. Thermal uniformity is also automatically maintained during temperature ramping. The highly temperature sensitive quaternary InGaAsP is used as an epitaxial metric for this novel control system, to demonstrate the advantages of pyrometry controled substrate temperature. These advantages include: excellent long term substrate temperature reproducibility; invariance of substrate temperature to substrate doping level; the ability to transfer processes from one type of wafer carrier or reactor to another with minimal adjustment.
