A new modification of the VEECO TurboDisc (R) Pioneer reactor (I x 2" wafer) has been designed based on 3D modeling of nitride deposition. The main improvement introduced was for the injector plate design by optimizing the geometrical position of all alkyl zone inlets to provide for optimal control of the growth rate uniformity across the substrate. An optimization technique based oil design of experiments (DOE) approach is described which allowed a significant reduction in the amount of calculations required for the optimization. Comparison between trends in effects of rotation rate, chamber pressure and reactant flow as obtained from experimental growth results and modeling computations is reported. It is demonstrated that the use of modeling has reduced the process development time to a few runs and resulted in significant improvement of growth uniformity and alkyl efficiency in the reactor. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.