Abstract

Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) simulations of phonon transport are performed in a computational model of an Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) transistor to investigate the transient thermal response of the device under Joule heating conditions, which give origin to a non-equilibrium region of high temperature known as hotspot. The gray LBM based on the Debye assumption is compared to a dispersion LBM which incorporates nonlinear dispersion for all phonon .branches, including explicit treatment of optical phonons without simplifying assumptions. The simulations cover the effect of hotspot size, heat pulse duration, and source term modeling, as either a constant or frequency-dependent term. Results indicate that hotspot peak temperature levels found by both the dispersion and the gray LBM are higher than Fourier diffusion predictions. Additionally, proper modeling of the source term is found to be critical, in order to accurately predict peak hotspot temperatures. Copyright © 2005 by ASME.