MIGAS'07 Summer School will focus on Multi-Physics and Multi-Scale Simulation

The International Summer School on Advanced Microelectronics (MIGAS) has become probably the top summer school held in Europe in the field of semiconductor devices. MIGAS is organized by the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG) and the Center for Innovation in Micro & NanoTechnology (MINATEC). The venue is always a beautiful town or resort in the Alps close to Grenoble. This year MIGAS'07 (June 24-29) will take place in Autrans, a well-known alpine resort, offering many kind of outdoor opportunities: hiking, mountain climbing, mountain-biking,...

Every year MIGAS addresses a different topic. This year, MIGAS'07 (10th Session) will be devoted to Multi-Physics and Multi-Scale Simulation for NanoElectronics.

It is well known that traditional modeling tools are not suitable to simulate the behaviour of nanoelectronic devices. The invited lecturers will explain new methods to model nanoscale devices:

-Non-equilibrium Green's functions methods (M.P. Anantram, Waterloo, Canada)
-Ab-initio methods (X. Blase, Lyon, France)
-Wigner functions methods (P. Dollfus, Paris, France)
-Monte Carlo methods (D. Esseni, Udine, Italy)
-Kp methods (F. Michelini, Marseille, France)
-Tight-binding methods (Y.M. Niquet, Grenoble, France)
-Deterministic solution of the Boltzmann Transport Equation (C. Jungemann, Munich, Germany)

In addition, there will be lectures on nanoscale device process simulation (M. Jaraiz, Valladolid, Spain), quantum transport theory (D.K. Ferry, Arizona, USA) , noise in nanoelectronics (G. Iannaccone, Pisa, Italy), and also characterisation techniques (S. Cristoloveanu, Grenoble, France) . Finally, I will conduct a lecture on the compact modeling of nanoscale MOSFETs.

No doubt MIGAS'07 will be a very interesting opportunity for students and researchers to become familiar with the new modeling methods proposed for the novel nanoelectronic devices.

Technology news

I've found a curious article at the EE Times Europe (a nice journal, by the way). The title is "Graphene transistor to rival silicon, say researchers". Some researchers at the University of Manchester and at the Max Planck Institute claim that they have developed a transistor that is 1 atom thin. Read the full story at the link above, but I've loved the last sentence: "Professor Geim indicated graphene based circuits would not come of age before 2025 and till then silicon based devices would predominate.". This is long-term research... Now, seriously, what they are developing, if it can be used industrialy, will be a revolution, bringing single electron devices to life. However, we shall have to wait 18 years more.

Links

I've found some interesting links about Compact Modeling. The first one is the homepage of Dr. Zhou Xing, at the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). A quite interesting page, with links to many of his papers and works.

The second link is more educational, and contains the material of a course in the "Grupo de Electrónica del Estado Sólido de la Universidad Simón Bolívar" (Caracas, VENEZUELA). The only drawback of this excellent page is that it is in a mixture of Spanish and English. However, the completeness of the page fully justifies a visit.

Carbon Nanotubes

I've been informed that the Journal of Semiconductor Science and Technology freely distributes (up to april, 18th) its special issue on charge and transport on Carbon Nanotubes. It is a very interesting topic, and the papers are both reviews and original research. I think it is an opportunity not to be missed.

Compact charge and capacitance models of nanowire MOSFETs

The compact modeling of nanowire MOSFETs (also called surrounding gate MOSFETs or Gate All Around MOSFETs) is a hot topic. The first compact drain current models were published in 2004:

Researchers are now addressing the compact modeling of charges and capacitances. In January 2007, in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, the first compact model for charges and capacitances of surrounding gate MOSFETs was published: Analytical Charge and Capacitance Models of Undoped Cylindrical Surrounding-Gate MOSFETs, by Moldovan O., Jiménez D., Roig J. and Iñiguez B.


In March 2007, a new charge model for surrounding gate MOSFETs has been published in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices: Analytic Charge Model for Surrounding-Gate MOSFETs, by Yu B., Lu W.-Y., Lu H. and Taur, Y.


Both models are based on the electrostatic potential soultion obtained by D. Jimenez et al. (Continuous analytic I-V model for surrounding-gate MOSFETs, IEEE Electron Device Letters, August 2005)
from the 1-D Poisson's equation in the radial direction (neglecting the effect of the lateral field). B. yu et al use the initial formulation proposed by Jimenez; charge and capacitances are written in terms of a variable which depends on the surface potential, and is calculated iteratively at the source and drain ends of the channel. Moldovan uses a charge-based formulation: from a charge control model, developed by B. Iñiguez et al. (Explicit continuous model for long-channel undoped surrounding gate MOSFETs, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, August 2005)
from the analysis of D. Jimenez et al, analytical expressions of charges and capacitances are obtained in terms of the mobile charge sheet densities at the source and drain ends of the channel; explicit expressions of the mobile charge sheet denisities are finally used.