Tracking the front of moving boundaries using grid generation techniques, 8th International meshing roundtable

Abstract An application of grid generation to process and device simulation of semiconductors is presented. We mainly discuss moving boundary problems in terms of etch and deposit process steps. A robust algorithm based on the adaptive refinement of a tetrahedral grid for tracking moving fronts is described. The algorithm combines the efficiency of the string method and the robustness of the level set method. Examples are given to demonstrate the capability of the proposed method in solving some difficult problems such as "de-looping " and "void creation " in the field of process simulation. 1 Introduction Technology driven computer aided design (TCAD) poses uniquely difficult technical challenges in grid generation. Device simulation requires careful treatment of the grid at interface layers, while process simulation has to deal with the problem of grid creation with moving boundaries [1, 2]. Consider an exposed boundary (or front), i.e. either a curve in 2D or a surface in 3D representing the interface between a given material and some surrounding medium. Due to process steps such as etching, deposition, oxidation, etc., the boundary evolves according to physical models. The evolution of the boundary can geometrically be very complicated.