ADVANCED COOLING TECHNOLOGIES INC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: C55-01b

Description

Current semiconductor device simulation software adopts Fourier’s law to perform the thermal transport modeling. However, Fourier’s law will become invalid at micro/nano-scale, which can cause a large discrepancy in the thermal and electrical performance between the simulation results and the actual application. To improve the current state-of-the-art, a new semiconductor device simulation software that adopts the advanced phonon frequency-dependent Monte Carlo simulation technique to replace the conventional Fourier’s law for the thermal transport modeling is proposed. Monte Carlo simulations track the phonon movement and scattering so that the thermal properties of the nanomaterial can be extracted stochastically. The simulation accuracy will be improved because the proposed Monte-Carlo-based software can incorporate detailed phonon transport physics. The Monte Carlo simulation will be coupled with Charon and Trilinos software packages, which are funded by the Department of Energy and its Office of Advanced Scientific Computing and Research, form a complete semiconductor device simulation software. In Phase I, the coupling between the frequency-dependent phonon Monte Carlo code, Charon, and Trilinos will be performed. Simple one- and two-dimensional test cases will be performed to calibrate the software. In addition, a basic user interface and a material database will be created to improve the user-friendliness of Trilinos and Charon. If Phase II of the project is funded, a three-dimensional device simulation software with an enhanced graphic user interface and the material database will be developed. Such device simulation software will offer high fidelity simulation results in which will benefit both the semiconductor industries and academia.