Quasineutral limit of a time-dependent drift-diffusion-Poisson model for p-n junction semiconductor devices (Q2496733)

The authors consider the system of p-n drift-diffusion equations coupled to the Poisson equation, describing the electric field, in one space dimension. The dimensionless version of this system contains a parameter \(\lambda\), called the Debye length, which multiplies the Laplace operator of the Poisson equation. Typically \(\lambda\) is very small with respect to the size of the device, expressing the so-called quasineutrality assumption; that is, that the device is electrically neutral. Putting formally \(\lambda=0\) turns the Poison equation into an algebraic equation relating the density of electrons and holes to the doping profile, and decouples the system. Thus the limit passage \(\lambda \to 0\) becomes a singularly perturbed problem. The paper is concerned with rigorous justification of this limit for an insulated piece of semiconductor under some technical assumption on the smoothness of the doping profile. The proof uses entropy production estimates which yield estimates of the solution uniformly with respect to Debye length.