ABSTRACT
Semiconductor technology computer-aided design, or TCAD, typically refers to the use of computer simulations to develop and optimize semiconductor processing technologies, and the resulting semiconductor devices, typically transistors. The use of a device simulator, or TCAD tools in general, requires substantially more knowledge of the internal workings of the simulator than the use of, say, a circuit simulator such as SPICE. In scaled devices with high electric fields and high electric field gradients, the carrier temperatures can often be much higher than the lattice temperature. For bipolar device simulation, the “Philips unified mobility model” should be chosen, as this model was developed with bipolar transistor in mind, and can distinguish majority and minority carrier mobilities. Qualitatively, however, simulations made with best available practices still provide meaningful and “predictive” device design guidelines.
