Nonequilibrium activated dissociative chemisorption: SiH4 on Si(100).

A three-parameter local hot spot model of gas-surface reactivity is employed to analyze and predict dissociative sticking coefficients for SiH4 incident on Si(100) under varied nonequilibrium conditions. Two Si surface oscillators and the molecular vibrations, rotations, and translational energy directed along the local surface normal are active degrees of freedom in the 15 dimensional microcanonical kinetics. The threshold energy for SiH4 dissociative chemisorption is found to be 19 kJ/mol, in quantitative agreement with recent GGA-DFT calculations. A simple scheme for increasing the rate of chemical vapor deposition of silicon from SiH4 at low surface temperatures is modeled.