3.3 Previous Attempts

The work of Riccobene [34] was the best attempt to the numerical modeling of galvanomagnetic effects in semiconductors in any dimension where she has simulated magnetotransistors in two and three dimensions. Previous works deal with the discretization of galvanomagnetic effects, actually the Lorentz force on the current density in a surface [1,3,26]. All the simulation results are two-dimensional, and in the work [1] the discretization procedure is developed taking into account only one component of the magnetic field and taking advantage of the grid structure. The work of Baltes [3,25,32] has been used as a basis of other discretization procedures [21], but all of them are two-dimensional approaches.

All attempts so far are based more or less on the original work by Pfleiderer [30]. Numerous publications can be found since then [9,23,31,41], but all the attempts are based in tearing the domain with discrete components, and only offer a two dimensional approximation of the domain. Neudecker et al. have made an attempt in three dimensions [27], but their work is only applicable to Hall plates. The work of Riccobene [34] is based on a general oriented device simulator, as the present thesis, but currently there is no literature dealing with the modeling and simulation of galvanomagnetic effects in three dimensions at low temperatures. Therefore, I tried to cover this lack of information with this thesis.

From the commercial TCAD tools only the device simulator DESSIS from Integrated Systems Engineering ^3.1 is able to simulate magnetic effects in two and three dimensions. The values for the Hall scattering factors are set to the bulk values described in this chapter and successful simulations of magnetotransistors have been obtained [35].