Introduction of TCAD Tools

This time I am going to introduced you with various TCAD Tools which are used in Electronics area, TCAD stand for Technology Computer Aided Design  Tools. Actually in Electronics field, fabrication of any device is not a easy task and  ofcourse manufacture cost is too high due to which fabrication part has been done in foreign countries. Therefore Device designing is divided into two parts first is Front End Designing and second is Back End Designing. In front end designing,  we used TCAD Tools in order to design a device or circuit on computer and then simulate it to see its response before actual fabrication........ Once it has been verified then we move toward back end designing that is actual Fabrication part.

There are various TCAD tools such as CADENCE, XILINX, MATLAB, SENTAURUS, SILVACO and many other tools, CADENCE and XILINX are the circuit level tools, where we can simulate any circuit. In XILINX we use hardware description language such as Verilog or VHDL through which we can design any digital circuit where VHDL stand for very high speed integrated circuit hardware description language.Most of us are familiar with MATLAB Tool, where mathematical model of any device can simulate, this is very useful tool from modeling purpose.

SENTAURUS and SILVACO are Device and Process Simulation tool, these tools are just like real time fabrication tools. As we know that there are various processing steps which are used to fabricate a device such as doping,diffusion, oxidation, photolithography, etching, etc. On these TCAD tools we first of all  process a device by using a process simulator such as ATHENA in SILVACO and after that we simulate the device in order to know its electrical, thermal, and optical response by using a device simulator such as ATLAS in SILVACO. SENTAURUS basically support all Silicon based device but SILVACO can support Silicon as well as Organic material based devices. With the help of device and simulation tools we can internally analyze any device.In India most of research work in the field of VLSI has been carried out through SENTAURUS and SILVACO TCAD Tools.