Electrothermal Simulation of Large-Area Semiconductor Devices
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Author
Kirsch, C.
Altazin, S.
Hiestand, R.
Beierlein, T.
Ferrini, R.
Offermans, T.
et al.
DOI
Abstract
The lateral charge transport in thin-film semiconductor devices is affected by the sheet resistance of the various layers. This may lead to a non-uniform current distribution across a large-area device resulting in inhomogeneous luminance, for example, as observed in organic light-emitting diodes (Neyts et al., 2006). The resistive loss in electrical energy is converted into thermal energy via Joule heating, which results in a temperature increase inside the device. On the other hand, the charge transport properties of the device materials are also temperature-dependent, such that we are facing a two-way coupled electrothermal problem. It has been demonstrated that adding thermal effects to an electrical model significantly changes the results (Slawinski et al., 2011). We present a mathematical model for the steady-state distribution of the electric potential and of the temperature across one electrode of a large-area semiconductor device, as well as numerical solutions obtained using the finite element method.
Publication Reference
International Journal of Multiphysics, vol. 11 (2), pp. 127-136, 2017.
Year
2017