Acknowledgment

I would like to express my deep gratitude to a number of people who supported and inspired my work on this thesis. Without them this would not have been possible.

First of all I would like to thank my advisor Prof. Siegfried Selberherr whose managerial skills not only enabled me a working environment of such a high quality students can ever dream of. His leadership skills and his uncompromising quest for excellence shape all his students significantly during their time at the institute. His international reputation and close worldwide contacts to the international semiconductor industry allow his students to investigate on several research fields with practical relevance. I am also indebted to Prof. Dietmar Dietrich who agreed to participate in my examining committee on a very short notice.

I wish to thank all my colleagues at the institute for an excellent working atmosphere and innumerable discussions about microelectronics, computer technologies, and also for their assistance. Especially my longstanding friend Prof. Tibor Grasser who rigorously improved the prior version of the simulator Minimos-NT and therefore created the basis of my work supported me with many ideas. Moreover, as he is a professional Boogie-Woogie pianist I could enjoy Boogie-Woogie lectures and wonderful music.

During my time at the institute I could considerably improve my knowledge on system administration on several different operating systems. I want to thank Christian Troger, Johann Cervenka, and my friends Thomas Binder and Richard Plasun for answering many questions and some system administration lectures. With Thomas Binder and Robert Mlekus I spent plenty of hours on discussions and ideas in software design and programming paradigms which mainly influenced my work.

I am grateful to my friends Jong-Mun Park for several discussions on the operation of semiconductor devices and Stephan Wagner for many explanations of linear solver systems. With them, Thomas Binder, Clemens Heitzinger, Hajdin Ceric, and Rodrigo Rodríguez-Torres I had many interesting discussions, not only about microelectronics but also about other important things in life.

I wish to thank Andreas Gehring for accurately and diligently proof reading and his many valuable comments on my thesis and the book on programming in C, Prof. Selberherr and I plan to issue in 2003. I'm also indebted to Vassil Palankovski, Klaus Dragosits, and Markus Gritsch who let me share their knowledge on semiconductor devices.

Above all I want to thank my family which continuously supported me at all times. Especially I wish to thank my parents for their love and help as they managed and supervised mainly the construction of my house in times I have been extremely busy with my work. Last but certainly not least I wish to express my deep love to my wife Sabine who encouraged me and kept me grounded all the while and to my wonderful children Elisabeth and Bernhard.