Abstract: In the third session, Dr. Gerhard Klimeck will give a brief overview of ABACUS and demonstrate several bandstructure tools. With these, students can explore the Standard Periodic Potential aka Kronig-Penney model as well as bandstructure formation by transmission through finite barriers. They can change barrier heights or shapes and gain a “feeling” for the resulting shapes and effective masses of the bands. The more sophisticated bandstructure lab enables students to model standard bulk materials such as Si or GaAs in a sophisticated Tight Binding model used in NEMO5. Effects of various strain configurations can be modeled and visualized. The tool can also model the bandstructure of modern nanowires. Some of these tools are powered by NEMO5 which is now being used to design nanometer scaled transistors in industry.

Series Information: Recent economic needs have re-kindled national and global interest in semiconductor devices and created an urgent need for more semiconductor device engineers and architects. Current students will need to be trained in the fundamentals of semiconductor devices to meet this growing semiconductor demand. Dr. Klimeck will introduce the r tools found in the ABACUS tool suite in nanoHUB He developed these tools to teach his standard semiconductor device class at Purdue University. These tools include simulations of: crystal structures and lattices, bandstructure and band models, bulk semiconductors, PN Junctions, Bipolar Junction Transistors, MOS Capacitors, and MOSFETs. The ABACUS tool suite is very popular, and has been used by over 15,000 users and in over 350 classes globally. The ABACUS group page highlights various features and animations.

The objective of this recitation series is to enable faculty to enhance existing or new semiconductor classes with interactive simulations. Simulations and animations can immerse students into “what if?” scenarios and engage them in more active forms of learning, including explorations used in homework assignments and design projects.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Gerhard Klimeck is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University; Director of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology; Reilly Director of the Center for Predictive Materials and Devices. He helped to create nanoHUB.org, the largest virtual nanotechnology user facility serving over 2.0 million global users, annually.

1. ABACUS
2. band structure
3. bulk bandstructure
4. nanowires
5. semiconductor devices
6. semiconductors
7. tool:abacus