A novel finite-element approach to device modeling

A finite-element device-simulation program is presented. An adaptive grid-refinement procedure is used to minimize the number of nodes. Two different kinds of elements are generated (triangles and rectangles) thus enabling the use of an irregular mesh. Different shape functions have been developed for the three variables; they are linear/ bilinear for the electric potential and linear/bilinear in Bernoulli-like functions for the quasi-Fermi potentials. Numerical examples are presented.