Pre-Silicon Accurate SPICE Modeling of Trench MOSFETs via Advanced TCAD Simulations and Dynamic Validation

Abstract

This work presents a novel and fully virtual flow for extracting the SPICE model of a power MOSFET, starting exclusively from TCAD simulations. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on experimental silicon data, our methodology enables designers to optimize the device performance and extract accurate electrical parameters before any physical prototyping is required. By leveraging advanced TCAD tools, we generate a realistic device structure and obtain all the key electrical characteristics, which are then used for precise SPICE model extraction and macromodel integration. The extracted model is dynamically validated using a gate-charge test performed identically in both the TCAD and SPICE environments, demonstrating excellent agreement with less than a 2% error in the charge quantities, Qgs and Qgd. This approach proves that initial silicon prototyping can be confidently bypassed, and it is highly innovative because it enables designers to achieve highly faithful device simulations before hardware fabrication. This significantly reduces the need for costly and time-consuming prototyping and design re-spins, accelerating the development process while enhancing the accuracy in terms of the transient and dynamic characteristics of MOSFETs designed for specific applications; in our case, for an e-fuse to be integrated into a more complex system.

Keywords

• SPICE model
• UTMOST IV
• victory
• process
• device
• PowerMOS