Current transport models for nanoscale semiconductor devices

Parallel to the search for new technological solutions for MOSFET scaling, the development of conceptually new devices and architectures is becoming increasingly important. New nanoelectronic structures, such as carbon nanotubes, nanowires, and even molecules, are considered to be prominent candidates for the post-CMOS era. At this small device size the geometrical spread of the carrier wave packet in transport direction can no longer be ignored. When the device size becomes shorter than the phase coherence length, the complete information about carrier dynamics inside the device including the phase of the wave function is needed and one has to resort to a full quantum-mechanical description including scattering. Transport in advanced nanodevices is determined by the interplay between coherent propagation and scattering. Numerical methods for dissipative quantum transport based on the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism, the Liouville/von-Neumann equation for the density matrix, and the kinetic equation for the Wigner function are attaining relevance.