We are interested in designing materials with altered thermal and electrical properties and new hybrid energy conversion and solid-state cooling devices. The main applications are in thermal management, semiconductor devices, and energy conversion technologies such as thermoelectric, thermomagnetic, and thermionic devices. Our design is based on the fundamental understanding of electron and phonon transport in small length and time scales and combines theory and experiment.
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A Monte Carlo code is developed to simulate bulk and thin-film heterostructure semiconductor based devices. This code now includes phonon scatterings (inter and intra valley acoustic and polar optical phonon scatterings ), impurity scatterings (neutral and ionized), Plasmon scattering and electron-electron interactions through a 1D Poisson solver. Pauli exclusion principle is included in the code with a new algorithm, which allows us to calculate local electron temperature and thermal current. The picture shows the distribution of electrons in the k space as they form a Fermi sphere.
Zebarjadi M., Bulutay C., Esfarjani K., and Shakouri A., Monte Carlo simulation of electron transport in degenerate and inhomogeneous semiconductors , Appl. Phys. Lett. 90 092111 (2007)
Zebarjadi M., Shakouri A., and Esfarjani K., Thermoelectric transport perpendicular to thin-film heterostructures calculated using the Monte Carlo technique, Phys. Rev. B 74 195331 (2006)
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