Eur. Phys. J. B 70, 133-143 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00158-7

Kinetic effects on the transport properties of nanostructured devices investigated by deterministic solutions of the Boltzmann-Poisson system

Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics, Graz University of Technology, Petersgasse 16, 8010 Graz, Austria

Corresponding author: ^a schuerrer@itp.tugraz.at

Received: 20 November 2008
Published online: 5 May 2009

Abstract

Deterministic numerical methods developed for solving Boltzmann-Poisson systems of carriers and phonons are applied to determine the transport properties of sub-micron semiconductor devices and bulk graphene. Kinetic effects on the far-from-equilibrium electron transport in a silicon npn-structure are studied by comparing the solution of the Boltzmann equation with corresponding maximum entropy distributions, which serve as reference for a hydrodynamical description. An indium phosphide n⁺-n-n⁺ diode is considered to investigate the impact of nonequilibrium polar optical phonons on the electron transport. Remarkable transport properties due to the exotic band structure of graphene are investigated on a kinetic level. The numerical studies based on a direct determination of the distribution functions of electrons and phonons demonstrate the significant influence of nonequilibrium phonons on the carrier transport in sub-micron electronic building blocks.