Detailed Phonon Generation Simulations via the Monte Carlo Method

Modeling heat generation at nanometer scales in silicon is of great interest and particularly relevant to the heating and reliability of nanoscale and thin-film transistors. Joule heating is usually simulated as the dot product of the macroscopic electric field and current density [1]. This approach does not account for the microscopic non-locality of the phonon emission near a strongly peaked electric field region. It also does not differentiate between electron energy exchange with the various phonon branches and does not give any information regarding the types of phonons emitted. The present work addresses both of these issues: we use a detailed Monte Carlo (MC) simulation to compute sub-continuum and phonon mode-specific heat generation rates, with applications at nanometer length scales.