Academic Staff
Giovanni MASCALI
Email: giovanni.mascali[AT]unical.it
Expertise:
Statistical Mechanics, Extended Thermodynamics, Charge Transport in Semiconductors
Research:
Initially my research activity was mainly focused on the study of mixtures consisting of a material medium, in local thermal equilibrium, interacting with a gas of photons in the framework of classical General Relativity. My main result in this field was the generalization of the system of moment equations for radiation obtained by K. S. Thorne starting from the Boltzmann transport equation. As an application, the problem of Compton cooling of hot electrons was also treated. The closure of the moment equations was obtained by means of the maximum entropy principle (MEP) in the framework of Extended Thermodynamics. Successively, still in the framework of Extended Thermodynamics, I investigated degenerate gases, obtaining a thermal state equation for Fermi and Bose gases. Both the system of equations for radiative hydrodynamics and degenerate gases have been proved to be hyperbolic. Later on, I began to apply some results obtained in the context of Extended Thermodynamics to describe the charge transport in semiconductor devices. In fact, mathematical models based on MEP can be used for Si and also for compound semiconductors like GaAs, GaN and SiC, which are widely used in the microelectronic industry since they have thermal and electrical properties very useful for high power and high temperature devices. These models at difference with those commonly used in industrial simula- tors do not have any free adjustable parameter but are based only on first physical principles. Suitable numerical schemes have been developed for finding approximate solutions, which are in good agreement with the experimental results. More recently I have developed a hydrodynamical model able to capture the effects of quantum confine ment of electrons in the smaller and smaller devices used in microelectronic industry. Currently I am working on a model for describing also the thermal properties of silicon by considering the phonon dynamics. An analogous model is under investigation also for graphene which has a two dimensional structure and is of great interest for the new micro and nanoelectronic devices.
Publications:
Teaching - Academic Year 2019/2020:
- MECCANICA RAZIONALE (CdS in Matematica)
- FISICA MATEMATICA AVANZATA 2 (CdS Magistrale in Matematica)
- MATEMATICA (CdS in Biologia)