Arpelier and professional TCAD serve different questions
Arpelier is positioned as a pre-TCAD visualization environment for exploring process–structure relationships before detailed physical simulation. “Pre-TCAD” here describes a working stage, not a standardized standalone product category: the goal is to clarify structure and process logic before quantitative analysis.
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Role comparison
| Question | Arpelier | Professional TCAD |
|---|---|---|
| Primary question | How does a supported process sequence create and change structure? | How do calibrated physical mechanisms and device behavior respond? |
| Main inputs | Ordered process steps, geometric conditions, materials, and masks | Geometry, meshes, material parameters, physical models, boundary conditions, and calibrated process inputs |
| Main outputs | Step-by-step 3D structures, cross-sections, and communication views | Quantitative fields, process or device results, curves, and extracted metrics |
| Best-fit stage | Learning, early structural exploration, review, and communication | Detailed analysis, prediction, calibration, and engineering validation |
| Quantitative prediction | Not the primary purpose | A central purpose when suitable models and calibration are used |
| Relationship | Clarifies structural intent before detailed analysis | Tests the questions that require professional physical simulation |
Questions Arpelier is designed to answer
Arpelier helps ask what structure follows from a supported sequence, then question a region of that calculated structure: What is it made of? Which process step first created it? What changed between structural stages? Which regions are geometrically connected to it?
Questions that require professional analysis
Quantitative electrical behavior, detailed transport, stress, thermal response, calibrated process physics, equipment-specific behavior, and other predictive questions require appropriate professional TCAD models, material data, calibration, and expert validation. The exact tool depends on the question.
Explicit limits
- Provenance change and removal history identifies related steps at origin level; it does not recover historical shape or affected volume or prove every physical root cause.
- Connect does not calculate resistance, current, voltage, or circuit behavior.
- Quantitative prediction of electrical device characteristics is not Arpelier’s primary purpose.
- Arpelier does not guarantee actual fabrication results, yield, or equipment-recipe outcomes.
- Its supported operations do not cover every material and process physics mechanism.
- Its visual structure and exploration modes do not replace professional TCAD, experiments, metrology, or process validation.
A complementary workflow
- Use Arpelier to express an early process sequence and structural intent.
- Inspect intermediate stages and identify the assumptions that matter.
- Select the questions that require quantitative simulation or experimental evidence.
- Move those questions into suitable TCAD, laboratory, and validation workflows.
The handoff is conceptual rather than an automatic solver integration.