Kinetic Theory of Electrons and Phonons in Semiconductors and Devices

Very large scale integration is the forthcoming design in semiconductor technology. In many cases the well established approach of drift-diffusion models describes very efficiently the carrier transport in semiconductors. However, in modern enhanced integrated electron devices these models lose their accuracy because the scale length of individual components becomes comparable with the distance between two successive carrier interactions with the crystal. In order to cope with high-field and submicron phenomena, semi-classical Boltzmann and quantum transport equations must be applied. Moreover, in femtosecond laser experiments non-equilibrium longitudinal-optical phonon distributions have been found to strongly affect the electron distribution function. Thus, for a unified treatment one has also to include kinetic equations for the evolution of phonons in a realistic description.