Posted: January 10, 2010

Resonant Tunneling Diode Simulation with NEGF

(Nanowerk News) A new version of RTDNEGF (1.3.2) has been recently deployed on the nanoHUB website. RTDNEGF is a simulator for Resonant Tunneling Diodes (RTD) that implements the Non Equilibrium Green Formalism (NEGF) as its principal computational model. The embedded single band physics is decribed in detail in the Applied Physics Letters paper " Quantum device simulation with a generalized tunneling formula"
This simulator is maintained by Dr. Jean Michel Sellier who belongs to Prof. G.Klimeck's group at Purdue University, USA.
The new version of the tool comes with two new composite plots that give deep insights on how the device behaves under an applied bias. One of those plots is reported below for a standard device simulated for a particular applied bias.
Composite plot generated by RTDNEGF version 1.3.2, simulation of a standard RTD
Composite plot generated by RTDNEGF version 1.3.2, simulation of a standard RTD.
As one can see, it is easy to realize what is going on inside the device. The plot reports the conduction band, the current, the transmission and the resonances in the upper part. They are all on the same energy scale so that it is easy to see the correlation between the conduction band and the resonances, for example.
The lower part of the plot reports the electron and doping density, the sheet densities and the IV curve. That gives a very good idea on why the device behaves in a certain way when a bias is applied.
Everybody is welcome to register and use this new version of the tool.
Source: NanoHUB, Jean Michel Sellier