NSF Award
0091528
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will provide a commercial software tool that integrates reactor scale, (pre)sheath transport, and feature scale models for comprehensive analysis of thermal chemical vapor deposition and low pressure plasma processes in integrated circuit fabrication. Phase II will focus on development of (pre)sheath models, a feature scale simulation tool, a charging model, and the supporting infrastructure in proprietary software, called CFD-ACE+, to integrate these models. (Pre)sheath models from Phase I will be enhanced to address additional common plasma reactor operating conditions. A feature scale simulator, based on the multi-physics models of the existing proprietary software and embedded in the reactor model, will be developed. The model for surface charging will be integrated with the (pre)sheath and sheath models for ion transport and the feature scale models. The software infrastructure will be extended to simplify the model definition steps common to all feature scale simulators. <br/><br/>This tool will provide engineers in the semiconductor industry with a means to predict the effect of both reactor designs and process conditions on the size, shape, and quality of the device components they are producing. It will extend the CFD-ACE+ commercial reactor scale modeling software to interface properly with feature scale simulators.
