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SIMBAD Thin Film Process Simulator

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Daryle Tilroe

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Apr 3, 1995, 3:00:00 AM4/3/95

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Thomas Janacek
403-492-5570 ext. 226
sim...@amc.ualberta.ca

THIN FILM PROCESS SIMULATOR FOR ULSI METALLIZATION

Geneva. April 4, 1995 -- The Alberta Microelectronic Centre (AMC) has
recently released a thin film process simulator of PVD and CVD processes.
The software package, called SIMBAD, is designed as a tool to speed up
process development and cut down experimental costs. SIMBAD is already
receiving a lot of attention from the semiconductor equipment manufacturers
and chipmakers.

The soaring costs of experimental process optimization make reliable
computer simulations an invaluable tool for process engineers. Such a
simulator can significantly shorten the development cycle and decrease
the cost of experimentally optimizing a deposition process. There are
several computer simulators available, but what makes SIMBAD unique is
its history of rigorous testing in the manufacturing environment.

SIMBAD was jointly developed by the University of Alberta, Edmonton;
Carleton University, Ottawa; and the Alberta Microelectronic Centre,
Edmonton. Since 1992, SIMBAD has also been tested in a joint research
project with Varian Associates, Palo Alto, California. The development
and experimental verification of the SIMBAD package is well documented
in five theses and over 45 publications. Varian and AMC have recently
entered into an agreement about joint marketing of the SIMBAD package.

SIMBAD has garnered quite a bit of positive feedback from its users.
Dr. Ron Powell, Director of the Materials and Equipment Laboratory at
Varian's E. L. Ginzton Research Centre, says:

"SIMBAD has provided us with valuable guidance on
process and hardware development and has led to
increased customer satisfaction as well."

Dr. Jianming Fu of Applied Materials Santa Clara, California, comments
on SIMBAD:

"Overall, the SIMBAD simulations can predict correctly
the trend how the process changes with variables
such as pressure, substrate distance, target erosion,
and emission... It is a useful tool to shorten the
development cycle and save the cost of experimentation."

SIMBAD was also featured in tutorials and invited talks (Dr. Dipankar
Pramanik, VLSI Technology; Dr. Robert Blewer, Sandia National Laboratories;
Dr. Andrew Neureuther, UC Berkeley) at the IEEE VLSI Multilevel
Interconnection Conference 1994 in Santa Clara. Dr. Robert Waits (UTI)
included SIMBAD in his short course at AVS-41.

The current release 1.3 of SIMBAD offers the simulation of the following
deposition processes: magnetron sputtering, collimated sputtering, bias
sputtering, alloy co-sputtering (TiW), elevated temperature aluminum
deposition, CVD of refractory metals, plasma etching, and evaporation.

SIMBAD has been developed on a SUN SPARC platform (Solaris 1.x). It is
also available for IBM RS/6000 and HP-UX architectures, and plans are to
add the Solaris 2.x environment before the end of this year.

The goal of the Alberta Microelectronic Centre is to facilitate the
advanced technology transfer from the University to industry. AMC engineers
and researchers are involved in thin film deposition and analysis, small
scale device manufacturing, ASIC engineering, GUI development, digital
signal analysis, and multimedia research.

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