Synopsys Sentaurus Tutorial- For EE 130/230M Project

Prof. King Liu and Dr. Xu

CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION– The following material is being disclosed to you

pursuant to a non-disclosure agreement between UC Berkley and Synopsys. Information disclosed in this presentation may be used only as permitted under such an agreement.

LEGAL NOTICE– Information contained in this presentation reflects

Synopsys plans as of the date of this presentation. Such plans are subject to completion and are subject to change. Products may be offered and purchased only pursuant to an authorized quote and purchase order. Synopsys is not obligated to develop the software with the features and functionality discussed in the materials.

Outline

• Software Setups and Configurations• Introduction to Sentaurus TCAD• Basic Sentaurus Operations• Project Tips

Software Setups• X11 Forwarding Software (i.e. Exceed)

• PuttyPutty is a remote login software, will help you to log into Unix system from a PC (Windows)

Successful running will display a task bar on your desktop

Exceed helps you forward the GUIs from Unix system to your PC

Software Setups• You may also use Xming that is loaded on the

computer lab.

• PuttyPutty is a remote login software, will help you to log into Unix system from a PC (Windows)

Servers and Performance• Instructional servers:

pulsar.eecs.berkeley.edu quasar.eecs.berkeley.edu c199.eecs.berkeley.edu

•Shared servers are going to be slow, due to the multiple-thread tasking.

Do not wait until the last day!•For those who want to WFH: The connection speed is going to be slow, if you are off campus and do the direct forwarding from the servers.

My suggestion: leave a computer on campus running Sentaurus and remote log into it.

Configurations• .cshrc file

A system configuration file under your folder, to define all the environmental variables needed in Unix system

Append the following codes to the bottom of your existing .cshrc file:

•X11 Forwarding Make sure you have enabled the X11 forwarding

option in putty.

setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE 27005@license-srv.eecs.berkeley.eduset path = ($path /usr/eesww/synopsys/G_2012.06/bin)setenv STDB $HOME/SYNOPSYS/STDB

Please check here !

Project Folder

• Copy the project folder provided on the project link of class website o to the instructional server on your home directory.

Running Sentaurus• Start Exceed• Start putty

Select the server you want to run your simulation Log on the server Input your Account name and Password

After you enter your login name, the system displays “Access Denied”. Ignore it and go ahead to enter your password.

After login, it’s recommended that you first check whether you have correctly added the Sentaurus path in the .cshrc file.

So type “which swb”

It tells you the installation path of Sentaurus.

Then, type “swb” to start Sentaurus workbench.

Sentaurus Workbench• Run command: swb• Graphical user interface to unify all simulation tools

into a single experiment project flow• Used to organize projects and set up experiments

for both structure generation and device simulation

Technology Computer-Aided-Design Tools

Parameter row

Experiment column

Unlocking Workbench• Double click 20nm-NMOS_wo_Halo : the simulation

modules will show up on the work bench• If you cannot edit the value in the cell, then Right

click 20nm-NMOS_wo_Halo-> project->unlock :: This will unlock the project for modification of values. Technology Computer-Aided-Design Tools

Parameter row

Experiment column

Sentaurus Structure Editor• Recommended to run in workbench

• Run command (under putty): sde•Structure Editor (1) generates the device structure (including the doping profiles) (2) Defines the electrical contact and (3) generates the meshing for numerical simulations.

Parameters you need to change/optimize for this project• Gate oxide thickness (Xo, Units: um)• MOSFET gate length (Lgate, Units: um)• Spacer length (Lsp, Units: um)• Channel Doping Concentration (ChanDoping, Units: cm-3)• Source/Drain extension depth (XjExt, Units: um)

Sentaurus Device• Recommended to run in workbench

• Run command (under putty): sdevice•Sentaurus Device simulates the device performance by solving multiple, coupled physical equations based on the meshing.

•Inputs: gate voltage (Vgs), drain voltage (Vds), workfunction

Common Physical models:• Si band structure (Ec/v, Nc/v and bandgap narrowing)• Fermi-Dirac Statistics• Poisson equation, continuity equation• Band-to-band tunneling, R-G current• Drift-Diffusion current, carrier mobility, velocity saturation

Sentaurus Inspect• Recommended to run in workbench• Used to automatically extract critical

device performance parameters such as:Vt_lin Id_lin Gm_linVt_sat Id_sat Gm_sat

I_OFFSSDIBL

• Also used to plot the Id-Vg and Id-Vd curves

Simulation Status• Start Sentaurus, first select from the left project

column, right-click to “preprocess”.

• Then you will find the nodes will display different colors, suggesting they have different properties. Here is a summary. Only colorful nodes will give you the simulation output.

• “Ready” means the current tool is free of syntax errors (You should see this since you are not allowed to modify the scripts).

• Right-click a certain Ready nodes to run, after a short period of time, you will find it changes to “done” or “failed”.

Basic Operations for Sentaurus Structure Editor

• Now you can view your simulation results if the nodes are done.

• Right-click the node in Structure editor, select Visualize → Tecplot SV (Select File) and choose msh.tdr file to view your device structure.

This is the gate position, only gate contact is left1-dimensional

contact

By default, doping concentration is displayed

Basic Operations for Sentaurus Device

• Right-click the “done” node in Structure Device, select Visualize → Tecplot SV (Select File) and choose des.tdr file to view your device performance contours (vector fields).

Linear region Saturation region

Current Density

Basic Operations for Sentaurus Device Cont.’d

• Right-click the “done” node in Structure Device, select Visualize → Inspect (Select File) and choose IdVg_des.plt file to view your device performance curves.

Choose Log Y or Linear Y here

Use cursors to read the data value along the curve

Most common plot combination is “gate: OuterVoltage”

“drain: TotalCurrent”

Device Terminals

Outputs

Idsat, Ilin and IOFF

VDD

IOFF

Idsat

Ilin

Vds=VDD

Vds=20mV

Threshold Voltage

Constant current definition of threshold voltage

Vth

Ith = 100nA · W/Lgate

W has default value of 1um for 2-dimensional device simulation

SS and DIBL

Sub-threshold Swing

DIBL is defined as the threshold voltage difference between linear and saturation region.

Q&A

Please come to Dr. Xu’s office hours (M&Tu) or send emails (nuoxu@eecs.berkeley.edu)for any technical questions.