Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Moscow, Russia, August 1923, 2012 715

A Novel Multi-physics and Circuit Co-simulation Algorithm for the Electro-thermal Analysis of Semiconductors and Circuits
J. Q. Chen and X. Chen College of Electronics and Information Engineering Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China

Abstract A novel co-simulation algorithm that combines the multi-physics simulation with
the circuit simulation for the electro-thermal analysis of circuits with semiconductor devices is proposed. It utilizes a physical model based multi-physics simulation to analyze the semiconductor devices in a circuit, and incorporates the multi-physics simulation into an equivalent-model based circuit simulation to simulate the circuit. As a sample, the proposed algorithm is employed for analyzing the electronic and thermal characteristics of a limiter circuit consisting of commercial PIN diodes with model number mot bal99lt1. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed algorithm are certied through comparison with measurements. Besides high-delity solutions, the proposed algorithm provides physical mechanisms for better understanding of the behavior of the PIN diode. 1. INTRODUCTION

It is well known that the commonly used method to analysis semiconductor devices and circuits is the circuit simulation, where the complicated and nonlinear characteristics of the semiconductor devices are normally represented by equivalent circuit models [1]. However, equivalent circuit models are not always valid, and may lose their accuracy in some special cases such as high-power, high frequency or ambient temperature variation applications. Moreover, most of those equivalent circuit models are without a direct physical interpretation [1], and thus cannot be easily used to predict the physical eects of the semiconductor devices and circuits. Another method is the physically-based multi-physics simulation [2]. It does an analysis by building physical models for semiconductor devices, then coupling multiple physical equations (e.g., the electromagnetic, semiconductor transport and thermodynamics equations) to form an equation system and solve the equation system in a numerical approach. Based on physical models rather than equivalent models, it is naturally able to accurately simulate semiconductor devices and circuits under various conditions and is convenient for predicting the physical eects. However, due to solve a set of strongly-coupled nonlinear dierential equations, it is computationally expensive [3]. Hence, until now it can only be used to simulate a semiconductor device or a simple circuit consisting of a semiconductor device and a few other elements. This paper presents a novel multi-physics and circuit co-simulation algorithm. It utilizes a multiphysics simulation method to simulate semiconductor devices in circuits, and then incorporates the multi-physics simulation into an equivalent-model based circuit simulation so that the simulation can be extended to circuits. In this work, the proposed co-simulation algorithm is applied to simulate a limiter circuit consisting of commercial PIN diodes with model number mot bal99lt1, and a serial of experiments are conducted to validate the proposed algorithm.
2. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CO-SIMULATION ALGORITHM 2.1. The Multi-physics Simulation for Semiconductor Devices

In principle, the electro-thermal behavior of semiconductors can be described by a multi-physics equation system[4], which includes: the Poissons Equation (1), the continuity equations for electrons (2) and holes (3), the current relations for electrons (4) and holes (5), the heat ow Equation (7), as well as the equations estimate the relation between the temperature and physical parameters such as the permittivity (8), the intrinsic carrier concentration (9), and the eective mobility of electrons and holes (10). In the equation system, the Poissons Equation (1) is the simplications of the Maxwell equations after adopting lumped assumption, and the continuity and current Equations (2)(5) are derive from the Boltzmann transport theory by employing the

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drift-diusion approximation. q 2 = (p n + Nt ), n 1 = J n R, t q p 1 = J p R, t q J n = n kb (T n + nT ) + qn n, J p = p kb (T p + pT ) + qp p, I = (J c + J d ) A = (J n + J p + T c = [(T )T ] + t

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

E )A t

E Jn + Jp + t

E,

(7) (8) (9) (10)

ni (T ) = Ns exp(Eg /(2kb T )), (T ) = [1 + B (T 300)] , T /T0 n,p n,p , T = 0 (1 + (E/Ec ) )1/

where, is the permittivity, is the electrostatic potential, Nt is doping concentration, n, p are electron and hole density, q is the elementary charge, t is time, J n , J p are the electron and hole current density, R is the electro-hole recombination rates, Dn , Dp are the corresponding diusion coecients, n , p are the electron and hole mobility, kb is the Boltzmann constant, J c , J d are the conduction and displacement current density, I is the branch current, A is the cross-sectional area, (T ) is temperature-dependent thermal conductivity, is the specic mass density, c is the specic heat capacity, T is the temperature, B is Blakemore constant, Ns is the number per unit volume of eectively available states, Eg is the energy gap, 0 is the value of mobility at 300 K, Ec is the saturation velocity, and is the coecients. For the set of Equations (1)(6), as T is a known value, it can be simplied to the solution of an increment equation [5]: Ay(k1) + By(k) + Cy(k+1) = H(k) , (11)
T T where y = [ n p ] , y = [ n p ] , A, B, and C are 3 3 matrixes, H is a 3 1 matrix. Similarly, as n, p, and are known values, after discretization described in [6], the increment equation of the thermal Equation (7) can be described as:

ay(k1) + by(k) + cy(k+1) ) = h,

(12)

where y = [T ], y = [T ], a, b, c, and h are the coecient. Based on the boundary condition, the increment Equations (11), (12) are able to be solved, respectively. An iterative method as the follows can be used to solve the multi-physical equation system. 1) Initializing the parameters such as the terminal voltages Uj and the ambient temperature T0 . 2) Solving the increment Equation (11) to get the electrical characteristics of the semiconductor. 3) Using the new n, p, and to solve the increment Equation (12) to get the thermal characteristics of the semiconductor, and then obtaining the variation of the temperature T0 . 4) Updating the characteristic parameters of semiconductors by employing the above obtained parameters n, p, , and T0 , and in this way the electro-thermal eects on semiconductors are considered simultaneously and correlated to each other in the simulation. 5) Repeating the steps 24 by using the updated temperature T0 + T0 until the convergence criterion, which may be dened as the temperature variation T0 is less than a preset smaller value, is satised. 6) The nal results (n, p, and T0 ) are used to obtain the branch current Ij in the device from (6).

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Figure 1: The PIN diode and its physical model.

Figure 2: The doping prole of the PIN diode.

2.2. The Multi-physics and Circuit Co-simulation Algorithm

For an element in the circuit, its branch currents are related to the terminal voltages. Assuming a device is located in the j th branch and between the (k 1)th and the k th node, it can be described as Ij = (Uk , Uk1 ). (13) To simplify the simulation and reduce the computation burden, only the crucial and sensitive semiconductors in the circuit are simulated by the above introduced multi-physics simulation. As for other devices, the Equation (13) is derived from their equivalent circuit models. Based on the method described in the authors previous work [7], for a circuit, its simulation can be simplied to the solution of the iterative equations f n 1 n n n n f1 f1 f1 f1 1 . . . n n 1 + n n 2 + n Ij Uk1 Ij Uk 1 U n n n n n f2 f2 f2 f2n . . . f2 n 1 + n n 2 + n U I U I U j j k1 k Un+1 = Un . 1 . (14) f (Un ), . . . . . . . . . .n n n n n fk fk fk fk fk U n . . . I n 1 + U n I n 2 + U n
1 j k1 j k

solution. And the iterative procedure is the same as that described in the authors previous work [7]. n , U n ), (U n , U n ) and (U n , U n ) are obIn the iterative Equation (14), the terms (Uk 1 k k 1 k k1 k tained by multi-physics simulation while the others are derived from the equivalent circuit simulation, In this way, the multi-physics simulation and the circuit simulation are integrated into a unied algorithm.
3. APPLICATIONS OF THE PROPOSED ALGORITHM

(U ,U ) (U ,U ) ,U ) (U ,U ) n = U n n = , 2 = , Uk n n 1 k1 + , and Uk U Uk U Uk 1 n + , where, U and U are two trial solutions to approximately calculate the partial derivaUk k 1 k tives of Ij is a small constant selected based on experience (such as 1.0 106 ) for a convergent

in which 1 =

(U

n k 1

n k n k1

n k1

n k

n k 1

n k n k

n k 1

n k

A commercial PIN diode with model number mot bal99lt1 and its physical model are depicted in Figure 1. It is a common practice to extract physical parameters of an electronic device from measured data by using a curve tting approach [8]. The PIN diodes physical parameters are extracted from a measured DC volt-ampere characteristic curve and as follows: the life time p = 5.0 107 s, n = 5.0 107 s for p-type and n-type carriers, the thickness of p-layer Xa = 5.0 m, I-layer Xb = 1.55 m, n-layer Xd = 0.5 m, the cross-sectional area A = 0.7 cm2 , and the doping prole is shown in Figure 2. As shown in Figure 3, a limiter circuit consisting of two PIN diodes, an AC source with voltage Us = 2.5 V, two resistors (RS = 1 k and RL = 1 k), and a capacitor CL = 22 pF, will be simulated by the proposed co-simulation algorithm as a sample. The simulated results are to be compared with that from measurement using a Tektronix TDS1012 oscillograph. Figure 4 compares the measured and simulated voltage waveform of the limiters output voltage Uo at 20 MHz and at the ambient temperature T = 27 C. From the comparison one observes that the two sets of data

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Figure 3: A limiter circuit composed of two PIN diodes.

Figure 4: The measured and simulated waveform of Uo at 20 MHz.

(a) 10 kHz

(b) 1 MHz

Figure 5: The measured and simulated PIN diode voltage waveforms at dierent ambient temperature.

(a)

(b)

Figure 6: (a) The simulated intrinsic carrier concentration and (b) carrier density of the PIN diode at 1 MHz and at dierent ambient temperatures, (b) that inside the center I-layer.

are in good agreement, and the output voltage Uo is about 0.65 V when the exciting voltage Us is 2.5 V, which clearly illustrates the limiting eect of the limiter. The temperature eect on the PIN diode limiter is simulated, and the results are compared with that measured by a Tektronix TDS1012 oscillograph and a ZTE-202-00AB thermostatic system. As depicted in Figure 5, the simulated and measured results are also in good agreement and the clipping threshold level of the limiter slightly decreases with the increase of the ambient temperature. The above temperature eect can be clearly and intuitively analyzed by the proposed cosimulation algorithm. As illustrated in Figure 6(a), the simulation of the proposed algorithm estimate that the PIN diodes intrinsic carrier concentration, which is the number of electrons in the conduction band and the number of holes in the valence band per unit volume, increase

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with the ambient temperature T . For a PIN diode in the forward voltage period, the increase of the intrinsic carrier concentration leads to the rise in the carrier concentration, which is clearly demonstrated in Figure 6(b). A higher carrier concentration means the PIN diode has a better electrical conductivity and can be in turn-on state even under a smaller positive terminal voltage, which results in the slightly decrease of the diodes clipping threshold. For the limiter, two PIN diodes connect in parallel, always there is one diode being in turn-on state, and thus the slightly decrease of the diodes clipping threshold makes the limiters clipping threshold to be decreased with the increase of the ambient temperature. It is worth noting that this example demonstrates the proposed multi-physics and circuit co-simulation algorithm is able to provide useful physical pictures of semiconductor devices.
4. CONCLUSIONS

A novel multi-physics co-simulation algorithm is proposed in this paper. This algorithm adopts the multi-physics simulation to analyze the semiconductor devices in a circuit, and incorporates the multi-physics simulation into the circuit simulation to simulate the circuit. The proposed method is employed to simulate a limiter containing commercial semiconductors with model number mot bal99lt1, and the circuit simulation is validated by comparing its simulation results with the measurement data. Its simulation results agree well with the measurement data. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is capable of depicting useful physical pictures for the analysis of semiconductor devices and circuits. These merits make the proposed algorithm to be a powerful and eective tool for the semiconductor devices and circuits simulation.
REFERENCES

1. Mantooth, H. A. and J. L. Duliere, A unied diode model for circuit simulation, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 12, No. 5, Sep. 1997. 2. Pokorny, M. and Z. Raida, Multi-physics model of Gunn diode, 17th International Conference on Microwaves, Radar and Wireless Communications, MIKON 2008, 4, May 1921, 2008. 3. Beaussart, S., O. Perrin, M. R. Friscourt, and C. Dalle, Millimeter-wave pulsed oscillator global modeling by means of electromagnetic, thermal, electrical, and carrier transport physical coupled models, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., Vol. 47, 929934, Jun. 1999. 4. Sze, S. M., Physics of Semiconductor Devices, Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981. 5. Kurata, M., Design considerations of step recovery diodes with the aid of numerical largesignal analysis, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, Vol. 19, No. 11, 12071215, 1972. 6. Skibinski, G. and W. Sethares, Thermal parameter estimation using recursive identication, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 6, No. 2, 228239, Apr. 1991. 7. Sui, W., Time-domain Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Hybrid System, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2002. 8. Chen, X., J. Q. Chen, K. Huang, and X. B. Xu, A circuit simulation method based on physical approach for the analysis of Mot bal99lt1 P-I-N diode circuits, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, Vol. 58, No. 6, Sep. 2011.