Within the frame of the european PROMPT-II project (esprit project 24038), the fields of interest at IEMN-ISEN are related to the 3D simulation of thermal annealing process steps. In particular, the implementation of a 5-species diffusion model is under developement what emphasises the requirement for a “clever” control of the space and time discretization. This paper presents such an automatic refinement tool based on the computation of an error estimator.

Within the frame of the european PROMPT project in which a multidimensional process simulation system has been developed, a new 3D process simulation program (DIFOX3D) is implemented to simulate the diffusion and oxidation steps. Its integration into the PROMPT system allows to achieve full 3D process simulations of typical 3D problems arising in advanced ULSI devices (e.g. shape of isolation corners in oxidation step). Diffusion/oxidation models and numerical issues are described in this paper with emphasis on the local remeshing strategy which is a key point to solve the oxidation problem. The benefits of these new simulation capabilities are demonstrated by the study of 3D effects in LOCOS structure.

This paper addresses the current fields of interest at IEMN/ISSN concerning 3D process simulation. The emphasis is on the diffusion and oxidation steps and the associated issue of 3D mesh generation. For each step, the achievements are presented with special attention to the numerical aspects. In particular, the principles underlying local remeshing are discussed.

This paper presents the concepts of a mesh generation technique for 3D process simulation involving structure deformation. One of the main problems is the displacement of boundaries leading to a (complete) remeshing of the structure, large cpu times and complexity of the algorithms. Our approach, based on Delaunay criterion, tetrahedral elements and triangular faces, allows local remeshings of the structure.