In modern semiconductor industry, ion implantation is the most important technique for adding dopants into semiconductor materials. The main advantage of this technique is the precise control of the process parameters, which is especially useful for the creation of very shallow dopant distribution in a semiconductor device.

Because the electrical properties of a semiconductor device strongly depend on the distribution of the dopants, very precise simulation methods are needed in order to explain and simulate this process. Thereby the behavior of the device can be predicted and parameters can be optimized. As a result of the miniaturization of the devices in the last decade, three-dimensional simulations are often necessary.
These precise simulation methods are one of the most critial steps concerning the simulation time of a full three dimensional process simulation. Due to the complicated structures and the small dimensions of modern semiconductor devices, Monte Carlo simulation methods have often been used to describe non-planarity effects, phenomena resulting from ion channeling and large tilt angles, and to provide accurate point-defect distributions for rapid thermal annealing processes. To reach the expected accuracy, three-dimensional simulations have to be performed with sophisticated models, especially for very shallow implantation conditions.  Meeting all these requirements demands simulation times which exceed one day or even more on high-end workstations.

Therefore the analytical simulation of ion implantation is desirable to avoid a bottleneck in the process simulation flow. On this account an analytical module for the multidimensional process simulation tool MCIMPL-II has been developed to allow a fast, stable, and precise simulation of inserting dopants into a three-dimensional structure. This module calculates the distribution of dopants with analytical distribution profiles, where the parameters are delivered from moment look-up tables.

Also some research is being done in the field of multilayer models, specifically in the field of three-dimensional dose-conservation models.