A new diode model formulation for electro-thermal analysis

Thermal effects due to the self heating of semiconductor devices is efficiently included in electrical simulators adding an equivalent RC network that models the thermal phenomenon. In this paper we consider the numerical problems that arise in the electro-thermal simulation of circuits containing strongly heating diodes. To circumvent these problems, we propose a new formulation of the diode equation which is intended to separate thermal terms from electrical ones. The numerical robustness of the proposed formulation is investigated when the Newton-Raphson solution algorithm is employed. It is shown that this new formulation allows the simulation of strong heating conditions that are commonly critical when conventional electro-thermal tools are used