Simulation of Quantum Ballistic Transport in FinFETs

Abstract

Quantum effects play a vital role in determining the transistor characteristics of FinFET devices. Quantum confinement, coherent ballistic transport, and quantum mechanical tunneling are a few examples. The nonequilibrium Green’s function formalism (NEGF) provides a rigorous description of quantum transport in nanoscale devices. Depending on the chosen space for representation of the wave function, real-space and mode-space representations are widely used. In this chapter, the basic tools involved in the NEGF simulation of the quantum ballistic transport in FinFETs are provided. The different techniques applied in either the real- or the mode-space representations are discussed. In this chapter, a comparison of the NEGF methods in the real-space representation considers the recursive Green’s function method, the Gauss elimination method, and the contact block reduction method and then highlights the computational efficiency of these methods. A comparison between the fully coupled, the partially coupled and the uncoupled methods in the mode-space representation is also given considering their accuracy and computational efficiency.