7. Summary and Outlook

Implementing a framework for the integration of TCAD with the actual fabrication process results in multiple impacts on the strategic position of TCAD in a semiconductor fabrication environment. Historically TCAD was only applied on single device structures and only during process development to gain better insight into the physics behind devices [202]. Additionally, information on physical quantities which are difficult to obtain experimentally was gained. By automated integration of the TCAD framework over the whole work flow of semiconductor circuit fabrication many additional application fields can be addressed, as shown by this work. The setup of new processes (or the transfer of existing technologies) is speeded up dramatically. The human induced errors are consecutely reduced. The number of, at least passive, users of TCAD in a semiconductor company grows from a handful engineers to the entire engineering and production team. This results also in a much better utilization of the resources spent in TCAD (software license costs, work efficiency of TCAD engineers, computer hardware etc.). The gap in technical information between the top management and the "engineer in the production line" is made smaller. This aspect should not be underestimated in the field of semiconductor industry because due to the high complexity of integrated circuit fabrication, any closed documentation of the processes is of inevitable value.
However some open questions remain. The integration of etching and deposition recipies via automatic conversion is still on the level of transferring etch and deposition rates. The lack of generic equipment simulators for etching and deposition leads to additional effort in calibrating these steps in the TCAD simulation. Furthermore, there is still no fully automated approach to generate SPICE models from measurement or simulation data without user interaction. This leads to a significant amount of resource allocation at every additional model interaction. Finally, package related effects (thermal and electromagnetical) are not included on a routine basis yet. Since there exists a strong trend to convergence of different technologies (RF, MEMS, sensors, optical etc.), system on a chip (SOC) solutions will play a sigificant role in the future. Therefore not only the small silicon die, but the overall system consisting of die, bond wires, lead frame, and package body has to be taken into account as a whole.