Lattice-gas approach to semiconductor device simulation

A new approach to semiconductor device simulation is presented which is based on a lattice-gas or cellular-automata model and is quite similar to methods recently explored in fluid dynamics. The approach obtains a stochastic solution to the diffusion-drift partial differential equations describing electron transport in semiconductors. The lattice-gas method appears to be fairly well-suited to electron transport simulation with its ability to handle complex geometry, its ease of programming and its stability being some key advantages. In addition, we show that the structure of the model itself—its Boolean character—leads to a partial inclusion of electron degeneracy effects. Finally, we make a preliminary assessment of the performance of the diffusion-drift lattice-gas model, finding it to be competitive with conventional approaches when its inherent parallelism is fully exploited.