We carry out Monte Carlo simulations of electron transport in 4H-silicon carbide (4H-SiC) based on the numerically calculated density of states (DOS) to obtain the electron mobility at low electric fields. From the results, it can be concluded that a correct calculation of the DOS requires a very dense wavevector k-mesh when low electron kinetic energies are considered. The crucial issue is the numerical efficiency of the DOS calculation. We investigate the scaling efficiency when different numbers of cores are used.

GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) became one of the most widely used light sources. One of their key factors is power conversion efficiency; hence, a lot of effort is placed on research to improve this parameter, either experimentally or numerically. Standard approaches involve device-oriented or system-oriented methods. Combining them is possible only with the aid of compact, lumped parameter models. In the paper, we present a new electro-thermal model that covers all the complex opto-electro-thermal phenomena occurring within the operating LED. It is a simple and low computational cost solution that can be integrated with package- or system-oriented numerical analysis. It allows a parametric analysis of the diode structure and properties under steady-state operating conditions. Its usefulness has been proved by conducting simulations of a sample lateral GaN/InGaN LED with the aid of ANSYS software. The results presented illustrate the current density and temperature fields. They allow the identification of ‘hot spots’ resulting from the current crowding effect and can be used to optimise the structure.

This paper presents an efficient method to calculate the influence of structural defects on the energy levels and energy band-gap for the 4H-SiC semiconductor. The semi-empirical extended Hückel method was applied to both ideal 4H-SiC crystal and different structures with defects like vacancies, stacking faults, and threading edge dislocations. The Synopsys QuatumATK package was used to perform the simulations. The results are in good agreement with standard density functional theory (DFT) methods and the computing time is much lower. This means that a structure with ca. 1000 atoms could be easily modeled on typical computing servers within a few hours of computing time, enabling fast and accurate simulation of non-ideal atomic structures.

The CoolMOS™ (Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany) has been considered a device that alleviates high-voltage limitations of unipolar power devices, but although the theoretical considerations seem to confirm such a possibility, this expectation has not been fulfilled until now. This paper identifies limitations of the CoolMOS™ concept. The analysis was carried out in two steps. The first step aimed at the theory of high-voltage superjunction and its implementation into a power VDMOS transistor, which resulted in the modified construction called CoolMOS™. The investigations have shown that the superjunction effect is not an inherent feature of high voltage junctions formed as a characteristic meander-like p-n junction. Such a junction starts to work in SuperJunction Mode (SJM) just when the electric field strength reaches the magnitude of the threshold electric field E_th. Also, other theoretical constraints concerning the SJ diode and CoolMOS™ design have been presented. The second step aimed at the physical and technological limitations that have been identified, taking advantage of numerical investigations for CoolMOS™ structures developed on the basis of a typical VDMOS one.