We explore the concept of passive-feedback lasers for direct signal
modulation at 40 Gbit/s. Based on numerical simulation and bifurcation
analysis, we explain the main mechanisms in these devices which are
crucial for modulation at high speed. The predicted effects are
demonstrated experimentally by means of correspondingly designed
devices. In particular a significant improvement of the modulation
bandwidth at low injection currents can be demonstrated.
We introduce an electronic model for solar cells including energy resolved defect
densities. The resulting drift-diffusion model corresponds to a generalized
van Roosbroeck system with additional source terms coupled with ODEs containing space and
energy as parameters for all defect densities. The system has to be considered in
heterostructures and with mixed boundary conditions from device simulation.
We give a weak formulation of the problem. If the boundary data and the sources
are compatible with thermodynamic equilibrium the free energy along solutions
decays monotonously. In other cases it may be increasing, but we estimate its growth.
We establish boundedness and uniqueness results and prove the existence of a
weak solution. This is done by considering a regularized problem, showing its
solvability and the boundedness of its solutions independent of the regularization level.
We derive gradient-flow formulations for systems describing drift-diffusion processes of a finite number of species which undergo mass-action type reversible reactions. Our investigations cover heterostructures, where material parameter may depend in a nonsmooth way on the space variable. The main results concern a gradient flow formulation for electro-reaction-diffusion systems
with active interfaces permitting drift-diffusion processes and reactions of species living on the interface and transfer mechanisms allowing bulk species to jump into an interface or to pass through interfaces.
The gradient flows are formulated in terms of two functionals: the free energy and the dissipation potential. Both functionals consist of a bulk and an interface integral. The interface integrals determine the interface dynamics as well as the self-consistent coupling to the model in the bulk. The advantage of the gradient structure is that it automatically generates thermodynamically consistent models.
We consider discretizations for reaction-diffusion systems with nonlinear
diffusion in two space dimensions. The applied model allows to handle heterogeneous
materials and uses the chemical potentials of the involved species as primary variables.
We propose an implicit Voronoi finite volume discretization on regular Delaunay
meshes that allows to prove uniform, mesh-independent global upper and lower L1
bounds for the chemical potentials. These bounds provide the main step for a convergence
analysis for the full discretized nonlinear evolution problem. The fundamental
ideas are energy estimates, a discrete Moser iteration and the use of discrete
Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequalities. For the proof of the Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequalities
we exploit that the discrete Voronoi finite volume gradient norm in 2d coincides
with the gradient norm of continuous piecewise linear finite elements.
An electronic model for solar cells including active interfaces and energy resolved defect densities
(2011)
We introduce an electronic model for solar cells taking into account
heterostructures with active
interfaces and energy resolved volume and interface trap densities.
The model consists of continuity equations for electrons and holes with thermionic
emission transfer conditions at the interface and of ODEs for the trap
densities with energy level and spatial position as parameters,
where the right hand sides contain generation-recombination as well as
ionization reactions. This system is coupled with a Poisson
equation for the electrostatic potential.
We show the thermodynamic correctness of the model and prove a priori estimates
for the solutions to the evolution system. Moreover, existence and uniqueness
of weak solutions of the problem are proven. For this purpose we solve a
regularized problem and verify bounds of the corresponding solution
not depending on the regularization level.
We investigate the convergence of an implicit Voronoi finite volume
method for reaction-diffusion problems including nonlinear diffusion
in two space dimensions. The model allows to handle heterogeneous
materials and uses the chemical potentials of the involved species as
primary variables. The numerical scheme uses boundary conforming Delaunay
meshes and preserves positivity and the dissipative property of the
continuous system. Starting from a result on the global stability of
the scheme (uniform, mesh-independent global upper and lower bounds),
we prove strong convergence of the chemical activities and their gradients
to a weak solution of the continuous problem. In order to illustrate the
preservation of qualitative properties by the numerical scheme, we present
a long-term simulation of the Michaelis-Menten-Henri system. Especially,
we investigate the decay properties of the relative free energy and the
evolution of the dissipation rate over several magnitudes of time, and
obtain experimental orders of convergence for these quantities.
In large-area Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) spatially inhomogeneous luminance at high power due to inhomogeneous current flow and electrothermal feedback can be observed. To describe these self-heating effects in organic semiconductors we present a stationary thermistor model based on the heat equation for the temperature coupled to a p-Laplace-type equation for the electrostatic potential with mixed boundary conditions. The p-Laplacian describes the non-Ohmic electrical behavior of the organic material. Moreover, an Arrhenius-like temperature dependency of the electrical conductivity is considered.
We introduce a finite-volume scheme for the system and discuss its relation to recent network models for OLEDs. In two spatial dimensions we derive a priori estimates for the temperature and the electrostatic potential and prove the existence of a weak solution by Schauder's fixed point theorem.
We consider a coupled system of two elliptic PDEs, where the elliptic term in the first equation shares the properties of the $p(x)$-Laplacian with discontinuous exponent, while in the second equation we have to deal with an a~priori $L^1$ term on the right hand side. Such a system of equations is suitable for the description of various electrothermal effects, in particular those, where the non-Ohmic behavior can change dramatically with respect to the spatial variable. We prove the existence of a weak solution under very weak assumptions on the data and also under general structural assumptions on the constitutive equations of the model. The main difficulty consists in the fact that we have to overcome simultaneously two obstacles - the discontinuous variable exponent (which limits the use of standard methods) and the $L^1$ right hand side of the heat equation. Our existence proof based on Galerkin approximation is highly constructive and therefore seems to be suitable also for numerical purposes.
We study a stationary thermistor model describing the electrothermal behavior of organic semiconductor devices featuring non-Ohmic current-voltage laws and self-heating effects. The coupled system consists of the current-flow equation for the electrostatic potential and the heat equation with Joule heating term as source. The self-heating in the device is modeled by an Arrhenius-like temperature dependency of the electrical conductivity. Moreover, the non-Ohmic electrical behavior is modeled by a power law such that the electrical conductivity depends nonlinearly on the electric field. Notably, we allow for functional substructures with different power laws, which gives rise to a $p(x)$-Laplace-type problem with piecewise constant exponent.
We prove the existence and boundedness of solutions in the two-dimensional case. The crucial point is to establish the higher integrability of the gradient of the electrostatic potential to tackle the Joule heating term. The proof of the improved regularity is based on Caccioppoli-type estimates, Poincar\'e inequalities, and a Gehring-type Lemma for the $p(x)$-Laplacian. Finally, Schauder's fixed-point theorem is used to show the existence of solutions.
We show the existence of solutions to a system of elliptic PDEs, that was recently introduced to describe the electrothermal behavior of organic semiconductor devices. Here, two difficulties appear: (i) the elliptic term in the current-flow equation is of $p(x)$-Laplacian-type with discontinuous exponent $p$, which limits the use of standard methods, and (ii) in the heat equation, we have to deal with an a priori $L^1$ term on the right hand side describing the Joule heating in the device. We prove the existence of a weak solution under very weak assumptions on the data. Our existence proof is based on Schauder’s fixed point theorem and the concept of entropy solutions for the heat equation. Here, the crucial point is the continuous dependence of the entropy solutions on the data of the problem.