Modeling Thermal Effects in Nanodevices

In order to investigate the role of self-heating effects on the electrical characteristics of nanoscale devices, we implemented a 2D Monte Carlo device simulator that includes the self-consistent solution of the energy balance equations for both acoustic and optical phonons. The acoustic and optical phonon temperatures are fed back into the electron transport solver through temperature-dependent scattering tables. The electrothermal device simulator was used in the study of different generations of nanoscale fully depleted silicon-on-insulator devices that are either already in production or will be fabricated in the next five to ten years. We find less degradation due to self-heating in very short channel device structures due to the increasing role of nonstationary velocity-overshoot effects which are less sensitive to the local temperature.