Multiple valley couplings in nanometer Si metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors

We investigate the couplings between different energy band valleys in a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) device using self-consistent calculations of million-atom Schrodinger-Poisson equations. Atomistic empirical pseudopotentials are used to describe the device Hamiltonian and the underlying bulk band structure. The MOSFET device is under nonequilibrium condition with a source-drain bias up to 2 V and a gate potential close to the threshold potential. We find that all the intervalley couplings are small, with the coupling constants less than 3 meV. As a result, the system eigenstates derived from different bulk valleys can be calculated separately. This will significantly reduce the simulation time because the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix scales as the third power of the total number of basis functions. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics