Abstract: Laser-induced chemical vapor deposition (LCVD) is an important process for freeform microfabrication of high aspect ratio prototypes. The system consists of a laser beam focused onto a movable substrate in a vacuum chamber. Heat from the laser at or near the focal spot of the beam causes gas in the chamber to react. As a result, solid-phase reaction products are deposited on the substrate to form the microstructure. In this paper, we develop a numerical model for simulating growth of an axisymmetric cylindrical rod by pre-specifying the surface temperatures required for growing the rod and then by solving for the laser power that satisfies the pre-specified temperatures. The solution using least squares is obtained by minimizing the sum of square deviations between the pre-specified surface temperatures and the calculated temperatures from the heat equation with a given laser power as a heat source. Model predictions of the laser power over growth time helped in optimizing the growth process. Rods grown based on the predicted laser power from the numerical model were very close to being cylindrical in shape. Ways to further improve the model are being investigated.

Key words: Numerical model, LCVD, Cylindrical rod growth, Least squares optimization