This milestone of accomplishing a PhD has come about through the help, interest and support of many persons, who I wish to acknowledge.
To begin with, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Prof. HANS KOSINA and Prof. SIEGFRIED SELBERHERR for providing me with the opportunity to pursue my doctoral studies at the highly esteemed research group at the Institute for Microelectronics. The congenial working atmosphere and a strong backbone of industrial partners at the Institute for Microelectronics serves as a stable platform for further enhancing one's scientific know-how. I wish to express my deep gratitude to my advisor Prof. KOSINA for his intimate and enthusiastic guidance and for always being extremely supportive and patient with all my technical and administrative problems that I encountered during my studies. He is a great scientist and his lucid ways of explaining the most complicated of concepts makes him an even great teacher. I also learned a lot from the weekly seminars held by Prof. SELBERHERR which were indeed quite stimulating and provided me a broad exposure to the field of microelectronics. His concrete suggestions and words of encouragement have always inspired me to do good work.
I also wish to thank Prof. TIBOR GRASSER, leader of the MINIMOS-NT device simulator development team, for his suggestions to overcome the obstacles during the implementation of the physical models into the simulator. Furthermore, I thank our head of the department, Prof. ERASMUS LANGER for providing excellent infrastructure and for being cooperative and helpful.
I thank Prof. GOTTFRIED MAGERL who kindly agreed to serve on my examination committee. My thanks also goes to Dr. BART SOREE who helped me in undergoing an internship at IMEC, Leuven, Belgium.
My thesis bears the imprints of many people, including my colleagues and friends. First and foremost, I would like to mention my room-mate, Gregor Meller. I relish the numerous long and interesting discussions I have had with him while sipping coffee in our room or while making our almost religious walks to the Mensa. His great sense of humor always kept me in high spirits and his breadth of knowledge, ranging from mathematical physics to world politics, has always amazed me. I am grateful to Vassil Palankovski not only for sharing his technical knowledge with me but also for his support in helping me settle-in comfortably in Vienna. He has been a source of constant encouragement for me. I also extend my appreciation to Enzo Ungersboeck and Gerhard Karlowatz for their ceaseless cooperation and for proof reading my thesis. To Johann Cervenka I would like to say a big thank you, for all his efforts and help in the model implementation into MINIMOS-NT. During my stay at the Institute I have had interactions with many other colleagues for whom I have great regard: Robert Entner, Stefan Holzer, Markus Karner, Mahdi Pourfath, Philipp Schwaha, Viktor Sverdlov, Oliver Triebel, Martin Vasicek, Martin Wagner, and Stefan Wagner, to name a few. I wish to extend my warmest thanks to them and all others who have helped me with my work, including Ewald Haslinger, Manfred Katterbauer, and Renate Winkler for their valuable assistance.
Without friends, life as a student would not be the same. I extend my heartfelt appreciation to all my friends, both near and far, for their endless moral support, their good wishes and encouragement. I consider myself fortunate to be surrounded by a bunch of very good friends in Vienna who helped me quickly get over ``the blues'' period during my graduate student days.
I feel a deep sense of gratitude for my parents who have strongly influenced my vision and instilled in me the ``values'' that really matter in life. I have worked hard to achieve my goals in life and they always gave me their unwavering support and continued to express their faith in me and in my ability to make responsible decisions. I dedicate this thesis to them, to honor their love for me, and seek their blessings.
Financial support from Intel Corporation and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), and the European Commission through the Silicon Nanoelectronics Network of Excellence (SINANO) and the STREP project d-DOTFET, is also acknowledged.