A Parallel Device Simulator Based on Finite Element Method

As semiconductor industry advances toward nano-scale technology, it comes across many issues (such as short channel, narrow width, hot-electron effects etc.), which need to be addressed in time to continue advancements with Moore´s Law. Technology Computer Aided Design provides a huge scope to build an environment which can be used to design and develop future devices, and study their alterations with much ease. In this paper, a parallel 2D/3D framework is presented to simulate semiconductor devices using finite element method. This method is used to discretize essential device equations and later these equations are analyzed by using a suitable methodology to find solution. OpenMP directives are used to parallelize the solution of device equations on many-core processors. To showcase the effectiveness of the method, a pn junction diode and a MOS capacitor are simulated, and the results are validated with TCAD device simulator Sentaurus.