NERSC Initiative for Scientific Exploration (NISE) 2010 Awards

Electron Transport in Presence of Lattice Vibrations for Electronic, Spintronic and Photovoltaic Devices

Sayeef Salahuddin, University of California, Berkeley

Associated NERSC Project: Massively Parallel Quantum Transport Simulation of Nano-Scale Electronic Devices for Ultra-Low Power Computing (m946), Principal Investigator: Sayeef Salahuddin, University of California, Berkeley

There are two important aspects of the problem that we seek to solve. Non-equilibrium transport is a generic formulation of any quasi-particle transport phenomena. As a result, to understand transport in the nanometer scale, for example, in a solar cell where electrons and holes are propagating or in a thermoelectric device where a phonon is propagating or a solid state lighting device where one needs to worry about photon propagation, the same Non Equilibrium formalism will be necessary. Thus the simulation platform that we are developing will be a general one that can be applied to a diverse set of problems.

If successful, this will be the first calculation of electronic transport in presence of lattice vibrations in realistically sized devices including atomistic detail.