An automatic system using mobile-agent software to model the calculation process of a chemical vapor deposition film deposition simulator

We have developed an automatic modeling system for calculation processes of the simulator to reproduce experimental results of chemical vapor deposition (CVD), in order to decrease the calculation cost of the simulator. Replacing the simulator by the mathematical models proposed by the system will contribute towards decreasing the calculation costs for predicting the experimental results. The system consists of a mobile agent and two software resources in computer networks, that is, generalized modeling software and a simulator reproducing cross-sections of the deposited films on the substrates with the micrometer- or nanometer-sized trenches. The mobile agent autonomously creates appropriate models by moving to and then operating the software resources. The models are calculated by partial least squares regression (PLS), quadratic PLS (QPLS) and error back propagation (BP) methods using artificial neural networks (ANN) and expresses by mathematical formulas to reproduce the calculated results of the simulator. The models show good reproducibility and predictability both for uniformity and filling properties of the films calculated by the simulator. The models using the BP method yield the best performance. The filling property data are more suitable to modeling than film uniformity.