A COMPARISON OF ENERGY BALANCE AND SIMPLIFIED HYDRODYNAMIC MODELS FOR GaAs SIMULATION

Abstract
The use of energy balance and simplified hydrodynamic models for simulating GaAs devices is investigated. The simplified hydrodynamic model predicts velocity spikes that are not present in more detailed Monte Carlo simulation results. These velocity spikes are associated with overestimation of thermal diffusion. The simplified hydrodynamic model can predict terminal currents that are significantly lower than those predicted by the energy balance model. The differences between the models are significantly greater than those observed previously for silicon devices. The main conclusion of this study is that the energy balance model is preferable to the simplified hydrodynamic model as the basis for GaAs device simulation, but the energy balance model still needs refinement to improve the agreement with more general simulation and experimental results.