This work presents a program for the graphical design of microelectronical structures. It has been developed for the use in a Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) framework, the Viennese Integrated System for Technology CAD Applications (VISTA). The purpose of TCAD-frameworks is the design of semiconductor processes and devices with emphasis on combining and integrating the single tools.
This program is called Profile Interchange Format Editor (PIF Editor, PED). It allows also the graphical correction and manipulation of device structures. The implemented functions for data and graphics processing may be used with an extension language for providing almost arbitrary, complex operations. All functions of the PIF Editor, which are related to data, are available for batch processing too, making it a powerful tool for simplification of complex simulation flows within the VISTA framework.
The PIF Editor combines interactive and graphical capabilities with processing geometric and physical data. A couple of problems related with the graphical features, the user interface, the data interface and the meeting of their different paradigms have been solved. The basic concepts and ways of operation are discussed.
The versatile capabilities of this program are shown with some functions for simple but effective semiconductor manufacturing steps that may be combined to procedures for generation of complete device structure data for use in simulators.