Theoretical Study of Carrier Transport in Silicon Nanowire Transistors Based on the Multisubband Boltzmann Transport Equation

We study electronic transport in silicon nanowire transistors at room temperature based on the self-consistent numerical solution of the multisubband Boltzmann transport equation and Poisson equation. The SchrÖdinger equation with nonparabolic corrections is solved in order to obtain the multisubband structure. Relevant microscopic scattering mechanisms due to acoustic and intervalley phonons, surface roughness, and ionized impurities are included in the simulation. A flux-conserving discretization scheme based on the uniform total energy grid is employed to avoid excessive numerical diffusion originating from the conventional kinetic-energy-based upwind scheme. We report an interesting kink behavior in the output characteristics and study the electron energy distribution inside the transistor as a function of bias conditions and scattering mechanisms.