Pathfinder: Using simulations to reduce industrial costs and the environmental consequences of plasma etching

使用气体等离子体对硅片进行刻蚀是计算机技术快速发展的基础，近年来，计算机技术为全球经济提供了动力，在可预见的未来，这种情况将继续下去。目前，实验测试是用来建立相关的等离子体混合物以产生所需的刻蚀。这种测试是一个昂贵和耗时的过程，即使是对推动技术继续进步所需的工艺进行相对较小的改进，而彻底改变用于种子等离子体的(原料)气体也是极其昂贵的。此外，硅蚀刻工艺会排放大量SF6和CF4等气体，这些气体的全球变暖潜力(GWP)是二氧化碳的数千倍。可以减少排放的创新，例如通过减少实验测试的需要，具有明显的成本、环境和社会效益。其业务理念是开发一种最先进的等离子体模拟包，该包将使用使用伦敦大学学院开发的方法从完全量子力学计算中生成的基本数据来确定适当的等离子体混合和参数(或者至少将对潜在等离子体进行负面评估，从而节省GB 100k的工业测试成本)。目前的提议是提供一些种子基金，以确定市场规模，并制定适当的商业模式。

The etching of silicon wafers using gaseous plasmas underpins the rapid advance in computer technology that has powered the global economy in recent years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Currently, experimental testing is used to establish the relevant plasma mixes to generate the desired etch. Such testing is an expensive and time consuming process even for the relatively minor improvements in the processes required to drive the continued advance of the technology, whilst a radical change in the (feedstock) gas used to seed the plasma is extremely costly. In addition the silicon etching process accounts for significant emissions of gases such as SF6 and CF4 which have a global warming potential (GWP) many thousand times that of CO2. Innovations which can reduce emissions, such as by reducing the need for experimental testing, have clear cost, environmental and social benefits. The business concept is to develop a state of the art plasma simulation package which will determine the appropriate plasma mixes and parameters (or at the very least will negatively evaluate potential plasmas, thereby saving £100ks of industrial testing costs) using fundamental data generated from fully quantum mechanical calculations using methods developed at UCL. The current proposal is for some seedcorn funding to determine the size of the market and to develop an appropriate business model.