Abstract
The quantum mechanical functionality of commercially pursued heterostructure devices such as resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs), quantum well infrared photodetectors, and quantum well lasers are enabled by material variations on an atomic scale. The creation of these heterostructure devices is realized in a vast design space of material compositions, layer thicknesses and doping profiles. The full experimental exploration of this design space is unfeasible and a reliable design tool is needed. The Nanoelectronic Modeling tool (NEMO) is one of the first commercial grade attempts for such a modeling tool. NEMO was developed as a general-purpose quantum mechanics-based 1-D device design and analysis tool from 1993-97 by the Central Research Laboratory of Texas Instruments (later Raytheon Systems). NEMO enables(R. Lake, G. Klimeck, R.~C. Bowen, and D. Jovanovic, J. Appl. Phys. 81), 7845 (1997). the fundamentally sound inclusion of the required(G. Klimeck et~al.), in the 1997 55th Annual Device Research Conference Digest, (IEEE, NJ, 1997), p. 92^,(R.~C. Bowen et~al.), J. Appl. Phys 81, 3207 (1997). physics: bandstructure, scattering, and charge self-consistency based on the non-equilibrium Green function approach. A new class of devices which require full 3-D quantum mechanics based models is starting to emerge: quantum dots, or in general semiconductor based deca-nano devices. We are currently building a 3-D modeling tool based on NEMO to include the important physics to understand electronic stated in such superscaled structures. This presentation will overview various facets of the NEMO 1-D tool such electron transport physics in RTDs, numerical technology, software engineering and graphical user interface. The lessons learned from that work are now entering the NEMO 3-D development and first results using the NEMO 3-D prototype will be shown. More information about the publically available NEMO 1-D executables can be found at http://hpc.jpl.nasa.gov/PEP/gekco/nemo

About Dr. Gerhard Klimeck

Gerhard Klimeck is a Principal member at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory since Sept. 2001. He joined JPL in 1998 as a Seniormember technical staff. His research interest is in the quantum mechanical modeling of electron transport through nanoelectronic devices, parallel cluster computing, and genetic algorithms. Previously he was a member of technical staff at the Applied Research Laboratory of Raytheon (formerly known as the Central Research Lab of Texas Instruments ) where he served as manager and principal architect of the Nanoelectronic Modeling ( NEMO ) program. The tool is available to the U.S. research community. Dr. Klimeck received his Ph.D. in 1994 from Purdue University where he studied electron transport through quantum dots, resonant tunneling diodes and 2-D electron gases. His research for his German electrical engineering degree which he obtained in 1990 from Ruhr-University Bochum concerned the study of laser noise propagation. Dr. Klimeck's work is documented in over 60 publications. He is a member of IEEE, APS, HKN and TBP.