Moment expansion approach to calculate impact ionization rate in submicron silicon devices

Abstract

A method to calculate the impact ionization rate in submicron silicon devices is developed using both an average energy and an average square energy of electrons. The method consists of an impact ionization model formulated with the average energy and conservation equations for the average square energy in the framework of an energy transport model. Parameters for the transport equations are extracted in such a way that calculated moments based on these equations match Monte Carlo simulation results. The impact ionization generation rate in an n+nn+ structure calculated with this method agrees well with the results obtained from Monte Carlo simulation. The new method is also applied to a submicron n-MOSFET. The calculated distribution of the generation rate is found to be quite different from the results based on a conventional method.