FBMC3D—A Large-Scale 3-D Monte Carlo Simulation Tool for Modern Electronic Devices

We present a flexible, full-band, 3-D Monte Carlo (MC) modeling software package for charge transport in semiconductor devices. The numerical model can employ both analytical and full-band descriptions of the band structure simultaneously and uses unstructured meshes for device discretization that can be constructed with commonly available meshing tools. A numerical approach is also included to minimize the self-forces resulting from the unstructured mesh. The scattering rates are computed over a tetrahedral mesh, the refinement capabilities of which provide accurate rates near band minima and maxima. The efficient geometrical device discretization enables us to simulate devices that have traditionally been limited to drift-diffusion approaches due to the computational requirements of MC simulations. To highlight the capabilities of this tool, we present two simulation examples, a conical HgCdTe APD and a silicon trench MOS, both run with a superparticle charge of 1e. In addition to simulating the output characteristics of the trench MOS and the gain and excess noise factor of the APD, we investigate the injection location-dependent time response and corresponding diffusion tail.