EVOLVE was developed to fill the need for physically based feature scale simulations in the microelectronics industry. EVOLVE simulates several processes that affect surface topography during IC fabrication; deposition, etch and thin film flow processes. EVOLVE 5.1 was released in the second quarter of 2000. There has not been much development of EVOLVE since then.

There are four main parts to the EVOLVE 5.1 simulation package. Each part of EVOLVE is a process simulator that is based on a "first principles" model.

• The low pressure transport and reaction simulator in EVOLVE is based on the "ballistic transport and reaction model" (BTRM). It is used to simulate low pressure deposition and etch processes; i.e., sputtering or physical vapor deposition (PVD), low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD), plasma enhanced CVD (PECVD), and plasma etching. It was developed largely by T. Cale.
• The high pressure transport and reaction simulator in EVOLVE is based on the "continuum transport and reaction model" (CTRM). It is used to simulate high pressure CVD (HPCVD). Surface diffusion can be included in either of the above parts of EVOLVE (BTRM or CTRM). It was developed largely by H. Liao for his Ph.D. work at ASU, under the guidance of T. Cale.
• The thin film flow simulator in EVOLVE is based on the "viscous thermal flow model" (VTFM). This part of EVOLVE is used to simulate flow or "reflow" processes. It was developed largely by H. Liao for his Ph.D. work at ASU, under the guidance of T. Cale.
• The electrochemical deposition simulator in EVOLVE is based on the transient or pseudo-stead state "electrochemical deposition model" (ECDM). It was developed largely by M. Bloomfield during his Ph.D. program at RPI and S. Soukane when he was a post-doc at RPI, under the guidance of T. Cale.

Please look at a one-page summary (below) of simulations using these codes to determine shape and composition of evolving films and surfaces.

EVOLVE is designed for process engineers and technology CAD (TCAD) engineers who need to determine the conformality and/or composition of deposited films, and/or the anisotropy of etched features. Selectivity issues can also be addressed, because of the material dependent chemistries allowed in EVOLVE. In addition, the models used in EVOLVE allow users to include information that is known about the chemistry and transport appropriate to a given process; i.e., EVOLVE is a "physically based" process simulator. It has been used successfully to develop and validate chemistry and transport models, as well as to study issues associated with geometric scaling and process integration. EVOLVE has been coupled with reactor scale simulators to form multiscale simulators; e.g., complete integration has been achieved for thermal CVD processes.

EVOLVE 5.1 was developed by Timothy S. Cale at Process Evolution Ltd. and by members of the Process Modeling and Simulation Research Laboratory in the Focus Center - New York, Rensselaer; Interconnections for Gigascale Integration at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Version 5.1 is an extension of EVOLVE 5.0i, which was released by Process Evolution in the summer of 1999. Version 5.0i was based largely upon work done at Process Evolution and members of the Process Simulation Laboratory at Arizona State University.

The development of EVOLVE was funded largely by MARCO, DARPA, SRC, NSF, Motorola, DEC, MRC, TEL, and SEMATECH. Considerable input was provided by colleagues at a number of companies; particularly, Motorola, DEC, LSI Logic, IBM and Intel.