Understanding Process and Materials Fundamentals is central to improving IC design, fabrication and testing. Modeling and Simulation (M&S) plays a significant role in learning and using these Process and Materials Fundamentals. Coupling fabrication experience, carefully designed experiments in both fabs and labs, and M&S efforts over the last twenty years has led to essentially predictive, quantitative models for several unit operations, i.e., the equipment design, process consumables, and set-points that are used to accomplish the desired changes in wafer state for a specific process. Even semi-quantitative or qualitative models that reflect improved understanding of the fundamentals have led to improvements in several key processes.

It is important to understand what M&S can provide in order to make reasonable resource allocation decisions as well as to estimate the resources needed to provide M&S support for developing individual unit operations and process flows. In addition to personnel, software and computers, this often includes data obtained from wafer processing; i.e., expensive characterization and perhaps performance data. Such data are needed to validate and calibrate unit operations models and simulators. In process integration studies, very small differences in the change in wafer state during one or more unit operations can significantly impact IC yield.

This course is designed to show how M&S efforts can be used (in combination with empirical information) to improve our understanding of process and materials chemistry and physics. This will be accomplished by using M&S studies of selected unit operations, chosen due to their relevance in leading edge IC fabrication technology and the relatively mature status of M&S protocols for these processes. This material lays the foundation for designing and improving unit operations.

In addition to discussing the physical phenomena that are important to account for in M&S studies of selected processes, the "submodels" needed to represent these phenomena will be summarized. The physical models to be discussed include heat transfer models, mass transfer models, chemical reaction models, microstructure evolution models, and stress-strain relationships. Although simulation methods and software will be referred to during the presentations, the emphasis will be on general approaches and what can be accomplished today.

A major goal of the course is for the participant to understand process induced changes at multiple length scales; e.g., on the wafer scale, on the scale of patterns on die (chips), on the scale of features, and on the scale of grains. Such "Multiscale" M&S is a topic of considerable current interest, particularly for its ability to address "chip scale" and/or loading issues. In addition to showing two specific approaches, the advantages and limitations will be discussed. This Multiscale approach to modeling IC fabrication processes is extended to discussions of the promise of predicting IC performance from "as processed" circuits, rather than "as drawn" or idealized circuits.