Simulation of Hot Electron and Quantum Effects in AlGaN/GaN Heterostructure Field Effect Transistors

We report on simulations of electrical characteristics of AlGaN/(InGaN)/GaN heterostructurefield effect transistors with quantum and hot electroneffects taken into account. Polarization charges lead to quantum confinement of electrons in the channel and to the formation of two-dimensional electron gas. The electron quantization leads to the spread of the electronwave function into the barrier and bulk but does not have significant impact on dc electrical characteristics.Hot electrons play an important part in the charge transport by spilling over into the bulk GaN where they are captured by traps. This leads to negative differential conductivity, which is also observed experimentally. The simulation results are in good agreement with measured dccharacteristics

Ultrafast relaxation of photoexcited carriers in semiconductor quantum wires: A Monte Carlo approach

A detailed analysis of the cooling and thermalization process for photogenerated carriers in semiconductor quantum wires is presented. The energy relaxation of the nonequilibrium carrier distribution is investigated for the ‘‘realistic'' case of a rectangular multisubband quantum-wire structure. By means of a direct ensemble Monte Carlo simulation of both the carrier and the phonon dynamics, all the nonlinear phenomena relevant for the relaxation process, such as carrier-carrier interaction, hot-phonon effects, and degeneracy, are investigated. The results of these simulated experiments show a significant reduction of the carrier-relaxation process compared to the bulk case, which is mainly due to the reduced efficiency of carrier-carrier scattering; on the contrary, the role of hot-phonon effects and degeneracy seems to be not so different from that played in bulk semiconductors