SIMsalabim: An open-source drift-diffusion simulator for semiconductor devices

The drift-diffusion technique is a well-established way of describing charge transport in semiconductors. While in some special cases it is possible to analytically solve the problem, typically numerical solutions are the best achievable result, especially in more complicated semiconductor devices, such as solar cells. Numerical solutions can be found, however, and often prove to closely align with experimental observations. SIMsalabim is a software that allows researchers to simulate solar cells or other semiconductor devices to access parameters that might be hard to observe in an experiment. SIMsalabim can do both steady-state and time-dependent simulations including effects of illumination, mobile ions, recombination, trapping, and dielectric mismatch. While SIMsalabim is not restricted to the simulation of solar cells, some relevant solar cell experiments that can be simulated include transient photovoltage and current-voltage sweeps (including hysteresis). SIMsalabim can be used to simulate many different device types, but the user should make sure that the physical model implemented in SIMsalabim fits the device and operating regime that is simulated. Because the physical model is constantly evolving, we refer the reader to the manual for what is currently implemented.