In this paper we develop a class of Implicit-Explicit Runge-Kutta schemes for solving the multi-scale semiconductor Boltzmann equation. The relevant scale which characterizes this kind of problems is the diffusive scaling. This means that, in the limit of zero mean free path, the system is governed by a drift-diffusion equation. Our aim is to develop a method which accurately works for the different regimes encountered in general semiconductor simulations: the kinetic, the intermediate and the diffusive one. Moreover, we want to overcome the restrictive time step conditions of standard time integration techniques when applied to the solution of this kind of phenomena without any deterioration in the accuracy. As a result, we obtain high order time and space discretization schemes which do not suffer from the usual parabolic stiffness in the diffusive limit. We show different numerical results which permit to appreciate the performances of the proposed schemes.

As is known, the numerical stiffness arising from the small mean free path is one of the main difficulties in the kinetic equations. In this paper, we derive both the split and the unsplit schemes for the linear semiconductor Boltzmann equation with a diffusive scaling. In the two schemes, the anisotropic collision operator is realized by the “BGK”-penalty method, which is proposed by Filbet and Jin [F. Filbet and S. Jin, J. Comp. Phys. 229(20), 7625-7648, 2010] for the kinetic equations and the related problems having stiff sources. According to the numerical results, both of the schemes are shown to be uniformly convergent and asymptotic-preserving. Besides, numerical evidences suggest that the unsplit scheme has a better numerical stability than the split scheme.