Hierarchical simulation of transport in silicon nanowire transistors

We propose a very fast hierarchical simulator to study the transport properties of silicon nanowire FETs. We obtain the transverse wave functions and the longitudinal effective masses and band-edges of the lowest conduction bands from a nearest-neighbor sp3d5s* tight-binding study of an infinite nanowire with null external potential. Then we plug these parameters into a self-consistent Poisson-Schrödinger solver, using an effective mass approach and considering the bands decoupled. We apply this method, which gives quantitatively correct results with notable time savings, for the simulation of transport in two different silicon nanowire FETs.