Electro-thermal simulation based on coupled Boltzmann transport equations for electrons and phonons

摘要

To study the thermal effect in nano-transistors, a simulator solving self-consistently the Boltzmann transport equations for both electrons and phonons has been developed. It has been used to investigate the self-heating effects in a 20 nm-long double-gate MOSFET (Fig. 1). A Monte Carlo solver for electrons is coupled with a direct solver for the steady-state phonon transport. The latter is based on the relaxation time approximation. This method is particularly efficient to provide a deep insight of the out-of-equilibrium thermal dissipation occurring at the nanometer scale when the device length is smaller than the mean free path of both charge and thermal carriers. It allows us to evaluate accurately the phonon emission and absorption spectra in both real and energy spaces.