Feasibility, Accuracy and Performance of Contact Block Reduction method for multi-band simulations of ballistic quantum transport

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the Contact Block Reduction (CBR) method's feasibility, accuracy, and performance for multi-band quantum transport simulations, extending its application to atomic TB and continuum KP models, and analyzing its practical utility.

Contribution

It introduces an alternative CBR approach for atomic TB systems, validates it with KP models, and assesses its performance and scalability for high-performance computing applications.

Findings

CBR method is practical for KP models in nanowire FET simulations.

An alternative CBR approach is developed for atomic TB systems.

CBR shows limited practicality for atomic TB FET simulations.

Abstract

Numerical utilities of the Contact Block Reduction (CBR) method in evaluating the retarded Green's function, are discussed for 3-D multi-band open systems that are represented by the atomic tight-binding (TB) and continuum k\cdotp (KP) band model. It is shown that the methodology to approximate solutions of open systems which has been already reported for the single-band effective mass model, cannot be directly used for atomic TB systems, since the use of a set of zincblende crystal grids makes the inter-coupling matrix be non-invertible. We derive and test an alternative with which the CBR method can be still practical in solving TB systems. This multi-band CBR method is validated by a proof of principles on small systems, and also shown to work excellent with the KP approach. Further detailed analysis on the accuracy, speed, and scalability on high performance computing clusters, is performed with respect to the reference results obtained by the state-of- the-art Recursive Green's Function and Wavefunction algorithm. This work shows that the CBR method could be particularly useful in calculating resonant tunneling features, but show a limited practicality in simulating field effect transistors (FETs) when the system is described with the atomic TB model. Coupled to the KP model, however, the utility of the CBR method can be extended to simulations of nanowire FETs.