25 August 2015

Japan's AIST adopts Silvaco's TCAD products for SiC power semiconductor research

Yokohama-based Silvaco Japan Co Ltd - a branch of Silvaco Inc of Santa Clara, CA, USA, a provider of technology computer-aided design (TCAD), circuit simulation and electronic design automation (EDA) software tools - says that the Advanced Power Electronics Research Center of Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has adopted Silvaco's TCAD tool for its silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductor research.

AIST began research on wide-bandgap semiconductor materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride (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, and from the second half of the 1990s AIST assumed a leading role in national projects aimed at establishing fundamental technologies for these new semiconductors.

"TCAD simulations are essential to the research on wide-gap semiconductors such as SiC and GaN," says Advanced Power Electronics Research Center deputy director Kunihiro Sakamoto. "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 utilizing Silvaco's TCAD products," he adds. 

"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 parallelized solver technology," notes Silvaco's general manager Yoshiharu Furui. "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," he adds. "Going forward, we will continue to extend our products to meet our customers' requirements as they push forward their technology innovations."

Tags: Silvaco SiC AIST

Visit: www.silvaco.com

Visit: www.aist.go.jp