Phonon-assisted ballistic to diffusive crossover in silicon nanowire transistors

As transistors get smaller, the simulations require full quantum-mechanical treatments. Most such approaches have treated the transport as ballistic, ignoring the scattering that is known to occur in such devices. We present the results of a three-dimensional, self-consistent quantum simulation of a silicon nanowire transistor. In these simulations we have included phonon scattering through a real-space self-energy assuming weak interactions. In these silicon nanowire transistors, the ballistic to diffusive crossover occurs at much smaller distances than previously anticipated. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2120890