TABLE OF CONTENTS Since the invention of the transistor more than 50 years ago [1, 2], the successful downscaling of silicon devices and advances in processing technologies have now enabled us to achieve highly complex electronic systems. The microelectronics industry has relied mainly on the shrinking of transistor geometries for improvements in circuit performance and cost per function for over four decades. Technology computer-aided design (TCAD) is used in the computer-aided design and engineering semiconductor device design, fabrication process design, technology characterisation for circuit design, manufacturing yield optimisation and process centring, and computer integrated manufacturing [3].
The strong foundation of the Si semiconductor industry and our ability to make the transistors smaller and smaller (downscaling), have now led the devices to their fundamental limits and more transistors on a single chip. This trend has led us into the ultra large-scale integration (ULSI), and the giga scale integration (GSI) era is approaching. Continued transistor scaling will not be as straight forward in the future as it has been previously because fundamental materials and process limits are rapidly being approached in the 'classical' bulk-Si CMOS technology. To sustain the silicon scaling over the next 10 15 years, the industry is currently facing difficult challenges. The deep submicron technology calls for new design and fabrication methodologies to cope with the complexity and coupling among different stages of a design and fabrication.
A chip design starts with the product specification, followed by the front-end and back-end designs. The design and implementation of an integrated circuit, be it...
