Numerical simulation of heat and mass transfer during nanosecond laser chemical vapor deposition on a particle surface

Chemical vapor deposition of TiN on a spherical particle surface subjected to nanosecond laser heating is simulated numerically here. A thermal model is developed to describe the heat transfer within the particle, chemical reaction on the particle surface, and mass transfer in the gases. The heat conduction and mass diffusion equations are discretized using the finite volume method with fully implicit schemes, and solved with tridiagonal matrix method. Temporal distributions of particle surface temperature and deposited film thickness resulting from multiple-pulse irradiation are analyzed for a wide range of parameters including laser fluence, pulse repetition frequency, pulse width, initial particle temperature, particle radius, and total pressure in the reaction chamber.