AIST Adopts Silvaco's TCAD for SiC Research
AIST began research on wide-bandgap semiconductor materials such as SiC and GaN during the second half of the 1970s in the era of the Industrial Science and Technology Agency of the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
From the second half of the 1990s, AIST assumed a leading role in national projects aimed at establishing fundamental technologies for these new semiconductors. The goal is to establish technologies for electric power conversion and power devices based on wide-gap semiconductors such as SiC and GaN. Such technologies enable high-efficiency electric power conversion.
Kunihiro Sakamoto, deputy Ddrector of the Advanced Power Electronics Research Center, commented, "TCAD simulations are essential to the research on wide-gap semiconductors such as SiC and GaN. By doing simulations with varied parameters, such as the types of materials and device structures and doping of implanted impurities, device characteristics can be estimated before doing trials.
"This makes it possible to shorten turnaround time by reducing the number of manufacturing iterations and to improve the robustness of the device design. We look forward to even greater acceleration of our research by utilising Silvaco's TCAD products."
Silvaco's general manager Yoshiharu Furui stated, "We are very pleased that AIST has adopted Silvaco's TCAD products. Compound semiconductor simulation is a field in which Silvaco has a long track record, with many years of development experience including 3D TCAD enhancements such as high performance meshing and powerful parallelised solver technology.
"Our increased focus on the power electronics market has been rewarded by strong customer acceptance of the accuracy and convergence properties of our TCAD simulation products. Going forward, we will continue to extend our products to meet our customers' requirements as they push forward their technology innovations."
