A WENO-solver for the transients of Boltzmann–Poisson system for semiconductor devices: performance and comparisons with Monte Carlo methods

In this paper we develop a deterministic high order accurate finite-difference WENO solver to the solution of the 1-D Boltzmann–Poisson system for semiconductor devices. We follow the work in Fatemi and Odeh [9] and in Majorana and Pidatella [16] to formulate the Boltzmann–Poisson system in a spherical coordinate system using the energy as one of the coordinate variables, thus reducing the computational complexity to two dimensions in phase space and dramatically simplifying the evaluations of the collision terms. The solver is accurate in time hence potentially useful for time-dependent simulations, although in this paper we only test it for steady-state devices. The high order accuracy and nonoscillatory properties of the solver allow us to use very coarse meshes to get a satisfactory resolution, thus making it feasible to develop a 2-D solver (which will be five dimensional plus time when the phase space is discretized) on today’s computers. The computational results have been compared with those by a Monte Carlo simulation and excellent agreements have been found. The advantage of the current solver over a Monte Carlo solver includes its faster speed, noise-free resolution, and easiness for arbitrary moment evaluations. This solver is thus a useful benchmark to check on the physical validity of various hydrodynamic and energy transport models. Some comparisons have been included in this paper.