Investigation of nanoscale heat transport in sub-10 nm carbon nanotube field-effect transistors based on the finite element method

Abstract

During the past few years, computational approaches and engineering thermal optimizations have been investigated due to its essential role in heat conduction problems related to the next-generation transistors. This paper probes the significance of thermal management applications in carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNTFETs). In this work, we refer to the phonon hydrodynamic model for thermal modeling of sub-10nm CNTFETs. Here, we report the nanoscale heat transport within CNTFETs based on the finite-element method (FEM). The excellent agreement between the phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) and our model prediction provides the validity of the present methodology. Our computation techniques suggest that limiting the heat propagation can be ensured by increasing specular phonon reflection inside the channel region. In addition, enhancing the thermal conductivity of CNTs with a small thermal boundary resistance is a feasible way to improve the heat dissipation ability.