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Semiconductor-Processing CAD and 3-Dimensional MEMS Simulation

The School of Electrical Engineering will expand and develop programs in Technology CAD (TCAD) to address the needs of nanotechnology, display, and MEMS. Remote access to sophisticated CAD and control software will be a component of the task. Three to four new faculty hires address process simulation, novel circuit design, and large area circuit modeling. Their efforts will couple to and support existing efforts in circuit simulation, CAD, MEMS, and process characterization that are actively underway in the School, and which are experimentally supported by work in the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility.

The drive to build entire systems on a single silicon chip requires a substantial computing and network infrastructure that can support interactive 3D graphics, multi-threaded applications, and be able to quickly perform computational analysis. The development and use of predictive modeling agents to determine electrical, material, mechanical, and thermal performance of MOS USLI and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) is of enormous interest at Cornell. Our objectives are to lead the effort in developing technology CAD (TCAD) for processing of ULSI circuits, small fast structures, and for MEMS design. We will extend established processing programs such as SUPREM to address the needs of nanotechnology.

Several new faculty will address issues such as semiconductor process simulation for circuits and MEMS, novel circuit design for low power electronics, high speed circuits, and possibly large area circuits for display and smart structures. Asst. Prof. Edwin Kan is joining us from Stanford where he directed development of the modeling effort on silicon processing. At Cornell he will extend TCAD work, developing first-principle semiconductor processing models from the atomic to the circuit level. His software will support knowledge abstraction across levels and information exchange within levels, and will couple strongly with the research being done at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility. Historically, Intel-architecture machines have not been used in circuit modeling software development; this effort will begin to transfer and develop tools that take advantage of the IA capabilities. Asst. Prof. Bradley Minch is joining us from Carver Mead’s group at CalTech to develop novel circuits for computation. The tools he will need for TCAD can take advantage of as much memory as possible. For T-Spice, which can be used as a table-based simulator, more memory means a finer mesh for the table, and hence more accurate simulations. The tasks of simulation, silicon compilation, design rule checking, and verification are separable. One area of investigation for his effort will be exploiting multiple processors for these tasks. All simulations will be verified against working devices and circuits.

We are expanding our programs in the circuit fabrication and modeling area to supplement an already strong program in semiconductor technology. At the present time, 20 Ph.D. students are involved in MEMS (Prof. MacDonald) and with last year’s hiring of Prof. Tien, we expect work in silicon-based processing, CAD and simulation, and polysilicon MEMS. There is a tremendous need for development and use of new CAD and simulation tools, such as 3D electromagnetic solvers integrated with 3D silicon process simulators, and 3D mechanical systems simulators. Cadence and Mentor Graphics for physical layout and IC design are presently used, but they primarily provide 2D views of the process. Tanner Tools is a PC-based software that provides the third dimension, and will being explored for MEMS design.

Participants

Last modified on: 10/05/99