Efficient path-integral Monte Carlo technique for ultrasmall device applications

✍ Scribed by L.F. Register; M.A. Stroscio; M.A. Littlejohn

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 976 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0749-6036
• DOI: 10.1016/0749-6036(89)90165-1

✦ Synopsis

The ability to model equilibrium electronic properties of ultrasmall devices using a path-integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) method is demonstrated. First, a direct sampling PIMC method and its advantages over Metropolis importance sampling PIMC methods in this application are described. Then two potential structures typical of ultrasmall devices, a single and a coupled double finite square well potential, are analyzed and the results compared to exact analytic results. The latter example demonstrates the ability to accurately resolve coupling induced energy level splittings at least as small as 2% of the nominal energy. (Lower levels of coupling were not considered.) An additional examp]e given, for which analytic results are not available, is the analysis of a two-dimensional, infinite, periodic quantum well array. The PIMC technique described here makes way for the application of the Feynman path-integral formalism, an advantageous formalism for treating scattering processes, to the study of the electronic properties of ultrasmall devices.