Recent advances in the fabrication of semiconductors have created almost
un- limited possibilities to design structures on a nanometre scale with
extraordinary electronic and optoelectronic properties. The theoretical
understanding of elec- trical transport in such nanostructures is of
utmost importance for future device applications. This represents a
challenging issue of today's basic research since it requires advanced
theoretical techniques to cope with the quantum limit of charge
transport, ultrafast carrier dynamics and strongly nonlinear high-field
ef- fects. This book, which appears in the electronic materials series,
presents an over- view of the theoretical background and recent
developments in the theory of electrical transport in semiconductor
nanostructures. It contains 11 chapters which are written by experts in
their fields. Starting with a tutorial introduction to the subject in
Chapter 1, it proceeds to present different approaches to transport
theory. The semiclassical Boltzmann transport equation is in the centre
of the next three chapters. Hydrodynamic moment equations (Chapter 2),
Monte Carlo techniques (Chapter 3) and the cellular au- tomaton approach
(Chapter 4) are introduced and illustrated with applications to
nanometre structures and device simulation. A full quantum-transport
theory covering the Kubo formalism and nonequilibrium Green's functions
(Chapter 5) as well as the density matrix theory (Chapter 6) is then
presented.