Charge distribution on thin semiconducting silicon nanowires

The subject of this paper is the calculation of charge distribution on and inside thin semiconducting silicon nanowires in electrostatic problems, by a coupled finite and boundary element method (FEM/BEM). A hybrid semi-classical (Laplace/Poisson) model is employed and a line model (with finite thickness) for a silicon nanowire of circular cross-section is proposed here. This model overcomes the problem of dealing with nearly singular matrices that occur when the standard BEM is applied to very thin features (objects or gaps). This new approach is also very efficient. Numerical results are presented for selected examples.