I wish to express my deep gratitude to a number of people who supported and inspired my work on this thesis. In the first place I would like to express my thanks to my advisor Prof. Dr. Siegfried Selberherr. His managerial skills and uncompromising quest for excellence shape all his students significantly during their time at the institute. His worldwide contacts to the semiconductor industry enable his coworkers to gain an insight into real-world problems and are of inestimable value for their future career. I am also indebted to Prof. Dr. Dietmar Dietrich who agreed to serve on my examining committee on a very short notice.
The work on this thesis was supported by Siemens AG (Infineon Technologies), Munich. Special mentioning is due to Dr. Andreas Spitzer and Dr. Frank Lau. Their continuous challenge for practical applicability and testing support has contributed much to the stability and usability of PROMIS-NT and the Algorithm Library.
Many discussions and cooperations with all of my colleagues have contributed substantially to this work. I am indebted to Claus Fischer, Thomas Simlinger, and Helmut Puchner for developing the core of the PROMIS-NT simulator. I am grateful to Tibor Grasser who consequently introduced the Algorithm Library into MINIMOS-NT and for keeping me busy with discussions, invaluable feedback, and suggestions for improvements of the Algorithm Library. I wish to thank Richard Plasun, Mustafa Radi, and Gerhard Schrom for many fruitful discussions about the general concepts and requirements of various TCAD simulators and to my room mate Robert Klima for many interesting discussions, not only about microelectronics but also about other important things in life. Last but not least I am obliged to mention my longstanding friend Martin Rottinger with whom I not only shared much time during school and the study of electrical engineering and various sports activities in our spare time.
I am very grateful to Prof. Jan Slotboom, Dr. Peter Stolk, Dr. Bert Huizing and everyone at the Semiconductor Device Architecture Group at Philips Natlab at Eindhoven for offering me a trainee position, for a (fruitful) exchange of ideas on practical applications and challenges of device and process simulations, and for introducing me into the Dutch life (and skiing) style.
On the very top of all those who I owe more than can be expressed here is my family. I can't appreciate enough their continuous and unconditional support of all my undertakings and the motivation they gave me during the last decades.