ElecTra Code: Full-Band Electronic Transport Properties of Materials

Abstract

This paper introduces ElecTra, an open-source code which solves the linearized Boltzmann transport equation in the relaxation time approximation for charge carriers in a full-band electronic structure of arbitrary complexity, including their energy, momentum, and band-index dependence. ElecTra stands for 'ELECtronic TRAnsport' and computes the electronic and thermoelectric transport coefficients electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, electronic thermal conductivity, and mobility, for semiconductor materials, for both unipolar and bipolar (small bandgap) materials. The code uses computed full-bands and relevant scattering parameters as inputs and considers single crystal materials in 3D and 2D. The present version of the code (v1) considers: i) elastic scattering with acoustic phonons and inelastic scattering with non-polar optical phonons in the deformation potential approximation, ii) inelastic scattering with polar phonons, iii) scattering with ionized dopants, and iv) alloy scattering. The user is given the option of intra- and inter-valley scattering considerations. The simulation output also includes relevant relaxation times and mean-free-paths. The transport quantities are computed as a function of Fermi level position, doping density, and temperature. ElecTra can interface with any DFT code which saves the electronic structure in the '.bxsf' format. In this paper ElecTra is validated against ideal electronic transport situations of known analytical solutions, existing codes employing the constant relaxation time approximation, as well as experimentally well-assessed materials such as Si, Ge, SiGe, and GaAs.