Improved Transmission Line Parameter Calculation through TCAD Process Modeling for Superconductor Integrated Circuit Interconnects

Abstract

The FLOOXS technology CAD (TCAD) process modeling tools developed at the University of Florida have been adapted under the IARPA SuperTools program to support the MIT Lincoln Laboratory SFQ5ee fabrication process. We use FLOOXS to build meshed models of passive transmission lines from superconductor integrated circuit layouts. We have previously developed a numerical solver that extracts transmission line parameters from the meshed model. In this work, we convert a layout slice to FLOOXS inputs, generate 2D meshes of cross-sectional geometries from simulated process steps, and then extract the transmission line parameters from the meshes. Results are shown compared against the results for simplified transmission lines that do not utilize process modeling. We conclude with a discussion on the application of TCAD process modeling for parameter extraction of structures in superconductor integrated circuits beyond the device level and make a recommendation on the necessity of process modeling for high-quality parameter extraction.