Nanoelectric Modeling Software Development

This Phase I project has two primary objectives. The first objective is to develop an engineering model of Resonant Tunneling Devices (RTD) to be implemented in AIM-Spice, a commercial software package running under Windows 95/NT. The development of a reliable device model is a prerequisite for the design and production of any semiconductor device technology. The RTD model will be a semi-empirical, physics-based model which will be scalable, allowing the user to accurately simulate RTD circuits. The second technical objective of this project is to simulate RTD and RTD/FET circuits, such as inverters, memory elements, and analog-to-digital converters. One driving FET which we will examine closely is the heterodimensional 2-D MESFET, a novel side-gated FET which offers considerable promise for compact, ultra low-power, multifunctional logic circuits. As part of this Phase I project, we will also refine the 2-D MESFET model already implemented in AIM-Spice in order to predict nanoscale 2-D MESFET device and circuit operation.