Thermal Analysis of Semiconductor Devices

To produce a device, three major aspects of the device operation and fabrication must be studied. The first aspect is the transport of charge carriers, namely, electrons and holes, inside the device. The second one is the process by which the devices are fabricated, and the third is the dissipation of heat from the devices to its environment. The study of carrier transport is commonly referred to as device physics, device modeling or device simulation. Over the past four decades, analytical techniques have been utilized to study devices with simple geometries [1–3]. Later, when the device structures became more complicated, two-dimensional numerical analyses based upon the finite difference method [4–6] have been used. Meanwhile, the three-dimensional finite element technique has also been developed to solve the nonlinear transport equations numerically for devices operating under steady state and transient conditions [7].