Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2009 (2009), Article ID 873683, 22 pages
doi:10.1155/2009/873683
Research Article

Existence of Weak Solutions to a Class of Degenerate Semiconductor Equations Modeling Avalanche Generation

Bin Wu1,2

1Department of Mathematics, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
2College of Mathematics and Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China

Received 22 February 2009; Accepted 3 June 2009

Academic Editor: Shijun Liao

Copyright © 2009 Bin Wu. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We consider the drift-diffusion model with avalanche generation for evolution in time of electron and hole densities n, p coupled with the electrostatic potential ψ in a semiconductor device. We also assume that the diffusion term is degenerate. The existence of local weak solutions to this Dirichlet-Neumann mixed boundary value problem is obtained.