The virtual fab in microelectronics: the dry etch case

The dry-etch is a critical process step for microelectronic devices manufacturing. Indeed, the scaling down of the device feature-size imposes an increasing complexity of this technological process and, consequently, a cost increase of the Research and Development (R&D). The use of computational tool aimed to simulating the etching process should reduce substantially the R&D cost and time. Moreover, these tools are fundamental to improve the understanding of the etching microscopic mechanism. In general, a noteworthy reduction of the device development cost in whole production cycle can be achieved including these tools in the virtual fab, i.e. a set of numerical tools able to simulate the effects of the full process steps flow. In this paper we discuss the application of a profile evolution simulator as a tool of the virtual fab.