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Constructing a Sentaurus TCAD

Based on documentation written by Elliott P Wright.

A tutorial on using the Sentuarus Workbench (SWB) to simulate a series of increasingly sophisticated semiconductor sensors. All instructions are to be on the UoB PP cluster.

Installation

The Synopsys software should ideally be installed on the local disk (e.g. /scratch) instead of the network disk (e.g. moose) for increased performance. For this reason, each user might have to install the tools themselves on their workstation. To make it available to others using the same workstation, please install it in a standard location /scratch/synopsys. If you do not see the necessary software at this location, only then you have to follow the instructions in this section.

The TCAD installation files are available under /disk/moose/general/TCAD/downloads.

Install the Synopsys Installer by running the command and follow the instruction. Please use /scratch/Synopsys as the installation location.

installer_v5.7/SynopsysInstaller_v5.7.run

To install specific programs, run the following from the installer location (e.g /scratch/Synopsys/installer/v5.7).

./installer -gui

Side ID Number: 7789/disk/moose/general/TCAD/downloads

Select the location of the product that you want to install under the "Source" window. For example, the latest version of Sentaurus TCAD is located under /disk/moose/general/TCAD/downloads/tcad_sentaurus_vW-2024.09.

Ignore the not writable error and enter the installation location as /scratch/Synopsys. Now Sentaurus TCAD should be installed on your system.

Starting

Start up the terminal and apply the following lines to set the license. This needs to be run in every new terminal session.

export SNPSLMD_LICENSE_FILE=27020@eplsv004
export STROOT=/scratch/Synopsys/sentaurus/current/ # Location where you installed Sentaurus

cd into the directory containing Sentaurus:

cd ${STROOT}/bin/

Then open TCAD SWB:

./swb

Constructing an Initial SWB PN Junction

The TCAD Sentaurus Tutorial can be found at the following location. Make sure to modify it based on the installation location:

/scratch/synopsys/sentaurus/current/tcad/current/Sentaurus_Training/index.html

I would recommend reading the first module up to Section 6 (Managing Projects) to gain an idea of how to use SWB. Pay particular attention to mentions of Device Simulation, as this what we will use to measure the simulated sensor's electrical properties.

Other Notes

Sentaurus Process can be used for fabrication, while Sentaurus Structure Editor uses pre-defined geometries. After a structure is generated, we can create a device to measure the electrical properties. To extract values from the simulation, the simulation flow must end with a Sentaurus Visual.

NOTE: Sentaurus Workbench (SWB) comes with pre-prepared projects.

Sentaurus Interconnect potential usage for multiple connected components

Sentaurus Project tab organised from top to bottom as: Total Flow (SPROCESS, SDEVICE, SVISUAL), Project Parameters, Simulation Tree.

Nodes in the Simulation Tree contain data.

SWB projects can be organised in two ways:

  • Hierarchical: core project files, and simulation results are separated
  • Traditional: all project data is placed in one directory

Parallel processing will be required if a 3D simulation is constructed.

To start Sentaurus Structure Editor on the command line, type: 

./sde

To start Sentaurus Visual, type:

./svisual.

Could use the Plot Overlay function in Sentaurus Visual to compare the behaviour of the simple PN junction to the rudimentary sensor module.

Sentaurus Visual command prompts can be written in tool command language (TCL) and/or python. A tutorial for this is included in the main Sentaurus tutorial. For the purposes of debugging, a knowledge of TCL basics is recommended.