SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE MODELING USING FLUX UPWIND FINITE ELEMENTS

A flux‐upwind finite element method is developed for the carrier transport equations in semiconductor device modeling. Our approach is motivated by the streamline upwind methods that have proven effective in fluid mechanics. The procedure reduces precisely to the Scharfetter‐Gummel approach in one dimension. In higher‐dimensions, however, it differs from this classical technique and is shown here to generate more accurate solutions with less numerical dissipation. Numerical results are presented for representative MOSFET and p‐n junction devices to illustrate this point. Both upwind techniques have been implemented in conjunction with an adaptive finite element refinement procedure for better layer resolution and yield a more stable algorithm.