Read one structure through four exploration modes
Structure Explorer is a workspace for reading the same calculated process-stage structure through four modes: Composition, Provenance, Change, and Connect. Switching modes keeps the geometric structure and viewpoint intact while allowing a selected region to lead into its materials, creation and later influence steps, step-to-step changes, and geometric connectivity.
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One structure, four questions
The four exploration modes do not generate separate structures. They divide one calculated structure into exploration units suited to a question, then apply selection, highlighting, transparency, and related process cues to those units.
Composition
What is this region made of?
Provenance
Which step created this region?
Change
What changed in this region?
Connect
What is this region connected to?
Composition: what is it made of?
Composition organizes the current process-stage structure into material-based exploration units. Select one or more materials from the structure or the material list, highlight their regions, or make them transparent to inspect internal stacking and occupancy. Volume information in the list represents the geometric volume occupied by that material in the current calculated structure.
Explore these structures in 3D
- Crossbar Memory Structure and Process Flow — Compare a single storage stack with the complete nine-cell array.
- Vertical Floating-Gate Memory Process and Structure — Compare the floating-gate shell with the channel and surrounding dielectric.
- 3D NAND Fabrication: SONOS Process Flow — Compare a channel-hole cross-section with the staircase landing levels.
- DRAM Capacitor Story: Deep Holes, Electrodes and Dielectric — Compare the independent storage nodes with the common electrode.
Provenance: which step created it?
Provenance organizes regions that remain in the current structure by their creation step and material. A fully removed origin remains as a deleted history row. Selecting a unit marks its creation step and related later steps that changed or removed material from that origin in Process Flow; a deleted row has no current 3D region to show on the canvas. A region that becomes a new material through oxidation, material modification, or implantation uses that transforming step as its new creation origin. This is origin-level process history: it does not recover the exact affected position or volume, a vanished historical shape, or prove the root cause of every physical reaction.
Change: what changed?
Change groups regions that were added, removed, or changed from one material to another between the current comparison target and its previous effective structural process step. Moving into Change from another exploration mode can keep the current structural time while selecting a related process step as the comparison target. Change is not a free comparison between arbitrary projects or any two points in the full history; it explores structural differences within the current process flow.
Explore these structures in 3D
- 3D NAND Story: Stacked Layers, Staircase and Channel Etch — Rotate the channel-hole and staircase views to compare their roles.
- GAA Nanosheet Story: Channel Release and Wraparound Gate — Look between the released silicon sheets and around the surrounding Gate.
- Photolithography Story: Mask Correction and Pattern Transfer — Compare corners and edges before and after mask correction.
Connect: what is it connected to?
Connect groups conductive regions that touch within the current structure into electrical-node exploration units. Metals and doped semiconductors are included by default, and general semiconductors can be included when needed. This is grid-based geometric connectivity; it does not calculate resistance, current, voltage, short-circuit likelihood, or circuit behavior.
Explore these structures in 3D
- CMOS Inverter Process Flow and 3D Structure — Follow the shared input Gate across both transistors.
- TSV Interconnect Structure and Process Flow — Trace a route from the frontside circuit to a backside copper endpoint.
- Metal Interconnect Hierarchy: Local Wiring to M7 — Distinguish a geometric line crossing from an electrical connection with a via.
- HBM TSV Story: Vertical Connections Through Stacked Dies — Trace a vertical path through both silicon and an inter-die gap.
Selected regions, process time, and exploration context
Picking a point in the 3D structure or a 2D cross-section creates a spatial reference for exploration. If another mode can resolve a related unit at that location, the selection carries across. A selection made without a spatial point, such as choosing a material from the list, can instead map to every related unit that contains that material.
A process Time Dot determines which structural moment is shown; an exploration mode determines how that structure is read. Selection and transparency in Provenance, Change, and Connect can be remembered per structural state during the current session, but they are not stored as part of the project’s process geometry.
Preparation states and interpretation limits
Composition can use the material information in the current structure immediately. Provenance and Change may show a waiting state while lineage or comparison data is prepared. Change can be unavailable when there is no previous effective structural step, and Connect can be empty when no node exists for the included material scope.
All four exploration modes are visual tools for understanding and explaining a calculated structure. Their selections, highlighting, and transparency do not modify the process result, and the modes do not replace professional TCAD, circuit extraction, electrical validation, or physical fabrication analysis.