Portable Graphical Tools for Concurrent Plasma Simulation

Abstract

Low pressure reactors (less than 1.5 Torr) are used for etching processes in the microelectronics industry. Hawk, a 3-D concurrent DSMC simulation tool, is used for large-scale simulations of these reactors. In order for Hawk to be convenient for the process engineers who use such tools, XHawk, a graphical interface to Hawk, and XFalcon, the graphical interface to a chemical database used by Hawk, were created. These applications were developed for the X-Windows platform [Nelson95]. In order to make this tool useful to a broader segment of users, and to maintain support for new simulation techniques incorporated into Hawk, a new version of XHawk/XFaIcon has been developed using TcI/Tk. This multiplatform, portable, interface development language has reduced the code size of XHawk/XFalcon, making the applications more manageable and expandable, and at the same time has allowed the incorporation of many new interface features. The XFalcon chemical database system has been expanded to incorporate an improved description of chemical reactions. These interface tools are being used in the microelectronics industry for the design and evaluation of plasma reactors.