Thermal Simulation Techniques for Nanoscale Transistors

Thermal simulations are important for advanced electronic sys-tems at multiple length scales. A major challenge involves electro-thermal phenomena within nanoscale transistors, which exhibit nearly ballistic transport both for electrons and phonons. The ther-mal device behavior can influence both the mobility and the leakage currents. We discuss recent advances in modeling coupled electron-phonon transport in future nanoscale transistors. The solution tech-niques involve solving the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE) for both electrons and phonons. We present a practical method for cou-pling an electron Monte Carlo simulation with an analytic “split-flux ” form of the phonon BTE. We use this approach to model self-heating in a 20 nm quasi-ballistic n+/n/n+ silicon diode, and to in-vestigate the role of hot electron and hot phonon transport