Self-heating in semiconductors: A comparative study

• A new expression for the source term in the heat conduction equation is developed.
• The heat source term for bipolar semiconductors is developed from thermoelectrics.
• The expression is appropriate for steady-state numerical simulations.

A new expression for the source term H, in the heat flow equation is developed for bipolar semiconductors. This term consists of heat generated by carrier-lattice collisions, recombination of electrons and holes, and other processes. The expression allows self-consistent calculations of self-heating in any device. The derivation is based on thermoelectric concepts. There exists several expressions for H in the general literature for calculating the temperature field, and the presently developed one is compared with the older ones. Discrepancies exist between all of the formulas and reasons for them are given.