A finite-volume scheme for a spinorial matrix drift-diffusion model for semiconductors

An implicit Euler finite-volume scheme for a spinorial matrix drift-diffusion model for semiconductors is analyzed. The model consists of strongly coupled parabolic equations for the electron density matrix or, alternatively, of weakly coupled equations for the charge and spin-vector densities, coupled to the Poisson equation for the electric potential. The equations are solved in a bounded domain with mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary conditions. The charge and spin-vector fluxes are approximated by a Scharfetter-Gummel discretization. The main features of the numerical scheme are the preservation of nonnegativity and L infinity bounds of the densities and the dissipation of the discrete free energy. The existence of a bounded discrete solution and the monotonicity of the discrete free energy are proved. For undoped semiconductor materials, the numerical scheme is unconditionally stable. The fundamental ideas are reformulations using spin-up and spin-down densities and certain projections of the spin-vector density, free energy estimates, and a discrete Moser iteration. Furthermore, numerical simulations of a simple ferromagnetic-layer field-effect transistor in two space dimensions are presented. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 819-846, 2016