QuantumATK Forum

QuantumATK => General Questions and Answers => Topic started by: Simarcity on September 17, 2015, 19:15

Title: Current Source in QW
Post by: Simarcity on September 17, 2015, 19:15

Is it possible to somehow simulate an electron moving through a conductor in a molecular dynamic simulation? Essentially, is it possible to simulate a current source in quantumwise? If not, is there anyway that this can be done via an extension or a script?

Title: Re: Current Source in QW
Post by: Yue-Wen Fang on September 17, 2015, 19:50

For the first question, I think it's not possible in a direct way! Generally, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are used to describe the ions' motions by using the Newton's Second Law. As for the electrons' transport (not "moving")  behaviors can be resolved  by density functional theory within the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism in ATK.

Title: Re: Current Source in QW
Post by: Jess Wellendorff on September 18, 2015, 12:45

Yue-Wen is right, molecular dynamics refers to simulating the dynamics of ions, not electrons. As for electrons, you can't really say where in real space it is at any given instant. We can calculate currents, current densities, etc, but we do cannot track a particular electron on it's way from one electrode to the other.