Orbital-free approach for large-scale electrostatic simulations of quantum nanoelectronics devices

Waldemar Svejstrup, Andrea Maiani*, Kevin Van Hoogdalem, Karsten Flensberg

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
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Abstract

The route to reliable quantum nanoelectronic devices hinges on precise control of the electrostatic environment. For this reason, accurate methods for electrostatic simulations are essential in the design process. The most widespread methods for this purpose are the Thomas-Fermi (TF) approximation, which provides quick approximate results, and the Schrodinger-Poisson (SP) method, which better takes into account quantum mechanical effects. The mentioned methods suffer from relevant shortcomings: the TF method fails to take into account quantum confinement effects that are crucial in heterostructures, while the SP method suffers severe scalability problems. This paper outlines the application of an orbital-free approach inspired by density functional theory. By introducing gradient terms in the kinetic energy functional, our proposed method incorporates corrections to the electronic density due to quantum confinement while it preserves the scalability of a theory that can be expressed as a functional minimization problem. This method offers a new approach to addressing large-scale electrostatic simulations of quantum nanoelectronic devices.

Original languageEnglish
Article number045004
JournalSemiconductor Science and Technology
Volume38
Issue number4
Number of pages9
ISSN0268-1242
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2023

Keywords

  • hybrid quantum devices
  • electrostatic simulations
  • Thomas-Fermi model
  • Schrodinger-Poisson method
  • orbital-free DFT
  • semiclassical methods
  • DENSITY-FUNCTIONAL THEORY
  • ELECTRONIC-STRUCTURE
  • ENERGY
  • INVERSION
  • LAYERS
  • STATE
  • GAS

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