Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Item
    Comparison of thermodynamically consistent charge carrier flux discretizations for Fermi-Dirac and Gauss-Fermi statistics
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Farrell, Patricio; Patriarca, Matteo; Fuhrmann, Jürgen; Koprucki, Thomas
    We compare three thermodynamically consistent ScharfetterGummel schemes for different distribution functions for the carrier densities, including the FermiDirac integral of order 1/2 and the GaussFermi integral. The most accurate (but unfortunately also most costly) generalized ScharfetterGummel scheme requires the solution of an integral equation. We propose a new method to solve this integral equation numerically based on Gauss quadrature and Newtons method. We discuss the quality of this approximation and plot the resulting currents for FermiDirac and GaussFermi statistics. Finally, by comparing two modified (diffusion-enhanced and inverse activity based) ScharfetterGummel schemes with the more accurate generalized scheme, we show that the diffusion-enhanced ansatz leads to considerably lower flux errors, confirming previous results (J. Comp. Phys. 346:497-513, 2017).
  • Item
    Highly accurate quadrature-based Scharfetter-Gummel schemes for charge transport in degenerate semiconductors
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2018) Patriarca, Matteo; Farrell, Patricio; Fuhrmann, Jürgen; Koprucki, Thomas
    We introduce a family of two point flux expressions for charge carrier transport described by drift-diffusion problems in degenerate semiconductors with non-Boltzmann statistics which can be used in Voronoi finite volume discretizations. In the case of Boltzmann statistics, Scharfetter and Gummel derived such fluxes by solving a linear two point boundary value problem yielding a closed form expression for the flux. Instead, a generalization of this approach to the nonlinear case yields a flux value given implicitly as the solution of a nonlinear integral equation. We examine the solution of this integral equation numerically via quadrature rules to approximate the integral as well as Newtons method to solve the resulting approximate integral equation. This approach results into a family of quadrature-based Scharfetter-Gummel flux approximations. We focus on four quadrature rules and compare the resulting schemes with respect to execution time and accuracy. A convergence study reveals that the solution of the approximate integral equation converges exponentially in terms of the number of quadrature points. With very few integration nodes they are already more accurate than a state-of-the-art reference flux, especially in the challenging physical scenario of high nonlinear diffusion. Finally, we show that thermodynamic consistency is practically guaranteed.