Efficient TCAD Thermal Analysis of Semiconductor Devices

We present an efficient numerical technique for the temperature-dependent TCAD analysis of semiconductor devices. The approach is based on the linearization of the physical model around a nominal temperature operating condition, and exploits the Green’s functions (GFs) of the physical model to estimate the device characteristics at a different temperature. Self-heating can also be accounted for through coupling an external thermal circuit, with no numerical overhead. In the static (dc) case, the thermal analysis can be readily implemented in TCAD tools, using GFs customarily used for the electron device noise and variability analyses. The proposed technique is also extended to the dynamic case, to model the temperature dependence of electron devices operating in large signal conditions. We provide an extensive validation of the GF-based thermal analysis, including simulations of a 22-nm FinFET and of an InGaAs HEMT with 250 nm gate length. In the dynamic case, we demonstrate the efficient thermal analysis of a medium power amplifier in a FinFET technology.