Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is a family of processes in which volatile precursors are transported over a heated substrate, dissociate, and react to leave a solid film. The variants differ mainly in how the precursor is broken apart and at what pressure. Low-pressure CVD (LPCVD) uses thermal dissociation in a reduced-pressure furnace and is the workhorse for dielectric films and thick epitaxial layers. Metalorganic CVD (MOCVD) uses organometallic precursors and dominates compound semiconductor epitaxy such as GaN. Plasma-enhanced and low-energy plasma-enhanced CVD add electrical dissociation so growth can happen at lower substrate temperatures, which is how planar hexagonal germanium was stabilised on m-plane CdS. Hot-wire CVD instead cracks precursor on a filament held above 1600 °C.
The parameters that decide outcomes are precursor chemistry and dose, partial pressures, substrate temperature and its gradient, carrier gas composition, and the kinetics of adsorption and surface diffusion relative to growth rate. These are not free knobs: in three-zone CVD of MnSe, precursor vapour pressure rather than temperature alone determined whether α-phase nanorods or β-phase triangular flakes formed. In vanadium-doped WS2, non-equilibrium growth kinetics caused dopants to segregate along crystallographic bisectors, producing tensile strain channels of about 0.70 percent rather than a random dopant distribution. Growth kinetics, in other words, write structure into the film whether or not the operator intends it.
Read this page, therefore, not as an assessment of whether CVD works, but of where the frontier of CVD sits and what it is currently unlocking.
Evidence base
Open questions
Assessment drafted 2026-08-31 from up to 18 KB sources using the technology-scorecard framework; scores are a draft read pending review.
Can AI-guided synthesis with real-time optical diagnostics actually close the wafer-scale reproducibility gap for 2D semiconductors, and on what timescale relative to the NSF-DFG award period beginning August 2026 2026 08 10 nsf 2522671 collaborative research dmref nsf dfg ai ?
Does the pulsed-precursor thickness gain seen in hot-wire CVD of a-Si:H transfer to other precursors and reactor geometries, or is it specific to filament dissociation of silane 2026 06 02 catalytic precursor dissociation in hot wire cvd and compari?
Is the intrinsic disorder and multi-domain structure of CVD-grown 3R-WSe2 a recipe problem that better growth control removes, or an inherent limit of the CVD route for sliding-ferroelectric devices 2026 06 02 impact of disorder dynamics and multi domain kinetics on the?
How do CVD-grown films compare directly against MBE and PVD on defect density, uniformity and cost per wafer for the same material? No source supplied makes that comparison.
Do air gaps (k=1.0) and amorphous BN take the tightest-pitch dielectric layers, or does enhanced SiCOH (Black Diamond lineage) keep extending?
Can any CVD/ALD chemistry ever reach hydrogen-free carbon nitride, or does the precursor-hydrogen constraint stand (the Halltech premise)?
Where does flowable CVD gap-fill hit its limit in 3D-NAND / GAA high-aspect-ratio structures?
Does low-temperature (sub-450C) diamond and dielectric CVD open a die-level thermal market (the PROUD 400C window)?