Handbook of Silicon Based MEMS Materials and Technologies

10.5. Anisotropic Etching: Atomistic Simulators

There are two types of atomistic simulator, depending on the actual method used for advancing time. The Cellular Automata (CA) methods provide a deterministic, mean-field propagation of the interface. They are characterized by a Constant Time Step (CTS) discretization of time and a Decide and Perform (D&P) updating scheme consisting of two system-complete evaluation loops inside each time step. In the first pass, the algorithm decides which processes need to be realized and, in the second, the selected processes are performed—effectively realizing them simultaneously (or in parallel). This is shown in Figure 10.2a. On the other hand, the Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) methods provide a completely sequential, ...