Semiconductors can exhibit electrical instabilities like current runaway, threshold switching, current filamentation, or oscillations, when they are driven far from thermodynamic equilibrium. This book presents a coherent theoretical des- cription of such cooperative phenomena induced by generation and recombination processes of charge carriers in semicon- ductors.

Under certain conditions electrons in a semiconductor become much hotter than the surrounding crystal lattice. When this happens, Ohm's Law breaks down: current no longer increases linearly with voltage and may even decrease. Hot electrons have long been a challenging problem in condensed matter physics and remain important in semiconductor research. Recent advances in technology have led to semiconductors with submicron dimensions, where electrons can be confined to two (quantum well), one (quantum wire), or zero (quantum dot) dimensions. In these devices small voltages heat electrons rapidly, inducing complex nonlinear behavior; the study of hot electrons is central to their further development. This book is the only comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of hot electrons. Intended for both established researchers and graduate students, it gives a complete account of the historical development of the subject, together with current research and future trends, and covers the physics of hot electrons in bulk and low-dimensional device technology. The contributions are from leading scientists in the field and are grouped broadly into five categories: introduction and overview; hot electron-phonon interactions and ultra-fast phenomena in bulk and two-dimensional structures; hot electrons in quantum wires and dots; hot electron tunneling and transport in superlattices; and novel devices based on hot electron transport.

This book brings together concepts from semiconductor physics, nonlinear-dynamics and chaos to examine semiconductor transport phenomena.

The field of nonlinear dynamics and low-dimensional chaos has developed rapidly over the past twenty years. The principal advances have been in theoretical aspects but more recent applications in a wide variety of the sciences have been made. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos in Semiconductors is the first book to concentrate on specific physical and ex

Recent advances in the fabrication of semiconductors have created almost un limited possibilities to design structures on a nanometre scale with extraordinary electronic and optoelectronic properties. The theoretical understanding of elec trical transport in such nanostructures is of utmost importance for future device applications. This represents a challenging issue of today's basic research since it requires advanced theoretical techniques to cope with the quantum limit of charge transport, ultrafast carrier dynamics and strongly nonlinear high-field ef fects. This book, which appears in the electronic materials series, presents an over view of the theoretical background and recent developments in the theory of electrical transport in semiconductor nanostructures. It contains 11 chapters which are written by experts in their fields. Starting with a tutorial introduction to the subject in Chapter 1, it proceeds to present different approaches to transport theory. The semiclassical Boltzmann transport equation is in the centre of the next three chapters. Hydrodynamic moment equations (Chapter 2), Monte Carlo techniques (Chapter 3) and the cellular au tomaton approach (Chapter 4) are introduced and illustrated with applications to nanometre structures and device simulation. A full quantum-transport theory covering the Kubo formalism and nonequilibrium Green's functions (Chapter 5) as well as the density matrix theory (Chapter 6) is then presented.

In Nonlinear Dynamics and Pattern Formation in Semiconductors and Devices the contributions of the International Conference on Nonlinear Dynamics and Pattern Formation in the Natural Environment (ICPF '94) in Noordwijkerhout, held by many internationally reknown experts, are compiled. To connect the field of semiconductor physics with the theory of nonequilibrium dissipative systems, the emphasis lies on the study of localized structures, their stability and bifurcation behaviour. A point of special interest is the evolution of dynamic structures and the investigation of more complex structures arising from interactions between these structures. Possible applications of nonlinear effects and self-organization phenomena with respect to signal processing are discussed.

• Provides a comprehensive survey of fundamental concepts and methods for optoelectronic device modeling and simulation. • Gives a broad overview of concepts with concise explanations illustrated by real results. • Compares different levels of modeling, from simple analytical models to complex numerical models. • Discusses practical methods of model validation. • Includes an overview of numerical techniques.

This collection of articles introduces the idea of a hierarchical order in chaotic systems and natural phenomena. To understand nature, nonlinear sciences use a multidisciplinary perspective. Therefore the book integrates research work of different fields: experimental evidence for the theory drawn from physics, biology and chemistry; theoretical progress in mathematical treatment, numerical techniques and graphical methods of nonlinear sciences; and to not-yet-understood philosophical and fundamental problems related to chaos and cosmos, chaos and quantum mechanics or evolutionary dynamics. Featuring the most recent advances in nonlinear dynamics this collection should provide an indispensable reference source and starting point for further research concerning dynamical and hierarchical chaotic systems. Besides this book is in honor of Professor O E Rössler, one of the pioneers of Chaos Theory, who celebrated his 50th birthday in May 1990.

Examines the optical properties of low-dimensional semiconductor structures, a hot research area - for graduate students and researchers.

In recent years the mathematical modeling of charge transport in semi conductors has become a thriving area in applied mathematics. The drift diffusion equations, which constitute the most popular model for the simula tion of the electrical behavior of semiconductor devices, are by now mathe matically quite well understood. As a consequence numerical methods have been developed, which allow for reasonably efficient computer simulations in many cases of practical relevance. Nowadays, research on the drift diffu sion model is of a highly specialized nature. It concentrates on the explora tion of possibly more efficient discretization methods (e.g. mixed finite elements, streamline diffusion), on the improvement of the performance of nonlinear iteration and linear equation solvers, and on three dimensional applications. The ongoing miniaturization of semiconductor devices has prompted a shift of the focus of the modeling research lately, since the drift diffusion model does not account well for charge transport in ultra integrated devices. Extensions of the drift diffusion model (so called hydrodynamic models) are under investigation for the modeling of hot electron effects in submicron MOS-transistors, and supercomputer technology has made it possible to employ kinetic models (semiclassical Boltzmann-Poisson and Wigner Poisson equations) for the simulation of certain highly integrated devices.