A mixed-finite volume element coupled with the method of characteristic fractional step difference for simulating transient behavior of semiconductor device of heat conductor and its numerical analysis

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The mathematical system is formulated by four partial differential equations combined with initialboundary value conditions to describe transient behavior of three-dimensional semiconductor device with heat conduction. The first equation of an elliptic type is defined with respect to the electric potential, the successive two equations of convection dominated diffusion type are given to define the electron concentration and the hole concentration, and the fourth equation of heat conductor is for the temperature. The electric potential appears in the equations of electron concentration, hole concentration and the temperature in the formation of the intensity. A mass conservative numerical approximation of the electric potential is presented by using the mixed finite volume element, and the accuracy of computation of the electric intensity is improved one order. The method of characteristic fractional step difference is applied to discretize the other three equations, where the hyperbolic terms are approximated by a difference quotient in the characteristics and the diffusion terms are discretized by the method of fractional step difference. The computation of three-dimensional problem works efficiently by dividing it into three one-dimensional subproblems and every subproblem is solved by the method of speedup in parallel. Using a pair of different grids (coarse partition and refined partition), piecewise threefold quadratic interpolation, variation theory, multiplicative commutation rule of differential operators, mathematical induction and priori estimates theory and special technique of differential equations, we derive an optimal second order estimate in L2-norm. This numerical method is valuable in the simulation of semiconductor device theoretically and actually, and gives a powerful tool to solve the international problem presented by J. Douglas, Jr.