Advancement of classical silicon-based circuit technology is approaching maturity
and saturation. The worldwide research is now focusing wide range of potential technologies
for the “More than Moore” era. One of these technologies is thermal-electronic logic
circuits based on the semiconductor-to-metal phase transition of vanadium dioxide,
a possible future logic circuits to replace the conventional circuits. In thermal-electronic
circuits, information flows in a combination of thermal and electronic signals. Design
of these circuits will be possible once appropriate device models become available.
Characteristics of vanadium dioxide are under research by preparing structures in
laboratory and their validation by simulation models. Modeling and simulation of these
devices is challenging due to several nonlinearities, discussed in this article. Introduction
of custom finite volumes method simulator has however improved handling of special
properties of vanadium dioxide. This paper presents modeling and electro-thermal simulation
of vertically structured devices of different dimensions, 10 nm to 300 nm layer thicknesses
and 200 nm to 30 um radii. Results of this research will facilitate determination
of sample sizes in the next phase of device modeling.
