Accuracy of the Frensley inflow boundary condition for Wigner equations in simulating resonant tunneling diodes

Journal Article · Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 EST 2011 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2010.12.002· OSTI ID:21499776

Haiyan, Jiang ^[1]; Tsu, Raphael ^[2]

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1. Department of Applied Mathematics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081 (China)
2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001 (United States)

In this paper, the accuracy of the Frensley inflow boundary condition of the Wigner equation is analyzed in computing the I-V characteristics of a resonant tunneling diode (RTD). It is found that the Frensley inflow boundary condition for incoming electrons holds only exactly infinite away from the active device region and its accuracy depends on the length of contacts included in the simulation. For this study, the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) with a Dirichlet to Neumann mapping boundary condition is used for comparison. The I-V characteristics of the RTD are found to agree between self-consistent NEGF and Wigner methods at low bias potentials with sufficiently large GaAs contact lengths. Finally, the relation between the negative differential conductance (NDC) of the RTD and the sizes of contact and buffer in the RTD is investigated using both methods.

• OSTI ID: 21499776
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 230, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2010.12.002; PII: S0021-9991(10)00666-2; Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; ISSN 0021-9991
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICAL METHODS AND COMPUTING
BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DIRICHLET PROBLEM
ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY
ELECTRONS
EQUATIONS
GALLIUM ARSENIDES
GREEN FUNCTION
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
PEIERLS METHOD
TUNNEL DIODES
ARSENIC COMPOUNDS
ARSENIDES
BOUNDARY-VALUE PROBLEMS
ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EVALUATION
FERMIONS
FUNCTIONS
GALLIUM COMPOUNDS
LEPTONS
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
PNICTIDES
SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES
SEMICONDUCTOR DIODES
SIMULATION