Efficiency Enhancement of PIC-MCC Modeling for Magnetron Sputtering Simulations Using GPU Parallel

Abstract

A particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision (PIC-MCC) model is presented, parallelized to be suitable for magnetron sputtering simulations ongeneral purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs). To reduce the large computation time generally required to calculate particleelectromagneticfield interactions, a numerical algorithm is optimized to obtain the best performance with GPGPU parallelization. Theefficiency and accuracy of the GPGPU parallelized PIC-MCC model are examined by comparing the calculated results and the correspondingcomputational time with analytical solutions and the computation time of the serial code, respectively. The erosion and deposition ratesduring sputtering predicted using this model are in good agreement with experimental results. The newly developed PIC-MCC model withGPGPU parallelization is thereby shown to be both efficient and accurate.