CAPCAL-a 3-D capacitance solver for support of CAD systems

Abstract

A program package is presented named CAPCAL that provides a method for calculation of the 3-D electric field distribution due to multilayer metallization of advanced VLSI (very large-scale integration) integrated circuits. The underlying physics and numerical modeling techniques used by CAPCAL are described. The finite-difference method together with a multigrid solver is used to permit easy program handling and full portability. Example capacitance calculations are presented for structures typical of the wiring of a memory cell. The influence of the line spacing and the permittivity of the passivation layer on the parasitic capacitances are also investigated. The codes developed have been tested on various computers down to the size of a microcomputer, and thus can be installed on every system currently in use for CAD.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>