Insight into phonon scattering in Si nanowires through high-field hole transport: Impacts of boundary condition and comparison with bulk phonon approximation

Abstract

The impact of how to model phonon scattering on hole transport in Si nanowires was studied based on Boltzmann’s transport equation. Boundary conditions for atomistic description of phonons in nanowires and approximation by bulk acoustic and optical phonons were analyzed in terms of their impacts on high-field hole transport. The boundary conditions for phonons influence the drift velocity and momentum relaxation time, especially at low electric field, but the energy relaxation time hardly depends on the boundary conditions. The impacts by the change of boundary conditions can be approximated by the change of the strength of acoustic phonon scattering in bulk phonon picture, though the behavior of energy relaxation and distribution function of holes can not be reproduced by bulk phonon approximation.