Electro-thermal effects in mixed-mode device simulation

Due to the ever increasing packaging density of integrated circuits, self-heating and thermal coupling effects become more and more important. For state-of-the-art mixed-mode device simulation the solution of the basic transport equations for the semiconductor devices is directly embedded into the solution procedure for the circuit equations. Compact modeling is thus avoided and much high accuracy is obtained which is especially true for the temperature dependence of the device terminal characteristics. We review the state of the art in mixed-mode device simulation with particular emphases placed on self-heating of individual and thermal coupling effects between different devices