R. Pinnau, A. Unterreiter

• This paper is concerned with numerical algorithms for the bipolar quantum drift diffusion model. For the thermal equilibrium case a quasi-gradient method minimizing the energy functional is introduced and strong convergence is proven. The computation of current - voltage characteristics is performed by means of an extended emph{Gummel - iteration}. It is shown that the involved fixed point mapping is a contraction for small applied voltages. In this case the model equations are uniquely solvable and convergence of the proposed iteration scheme follows. Numerical simulations of a one dimensional resonant tunneling diode are presented. The computed current - voltage characteristics are in good qualitative agreement with experimental measurements. The appearance of negative differential resistances is verified for the first time in a Quantum Drift Diffusion model.