Crosslight Short Course at Photonic West 2013 (Nov. 7th, 2012)

Crosslight is pleased to offer a free half-day short course on optoelectronic
device simulation on Wednesday, Feb. 6th at the Photonics West conference in San Francisco.
Details are available from this
link.

Introducing Optowizard (Sep. 4th, 2012)

Optowizard is a new software modeling tool from Crosslight intended
for optical modeling of passive devices. Crosslight’s device simulators
have a long history of tightly coupling optical and electrical models. Depending
on the situation, a wide variety of models were available including:

• eigenmode solvers
• beam propagation methods (BPM)
• multi-layer transfer matrices (TMM)
• finite difference time domain models (FDTD)
• ray tracing

With Optowizard, these models are now available for stand-alone use for users
who do not need to solve the full device equations.

Along with Optowizard, Crosslight is also pleased to introduce its own brand new
FDTD solver which can be used in place of the previous solvers from MIT (Meep)
and Acceleware. Crosslight’s FDTD code can also be used in APSYS and PICS3D
to model CMOS image sensors and photonic crystal lasers.
Details can be found here.

Version 2012 device simulators released (Aug 31st, 2012)

Version 2012 release represents a high level of maturity for
Crosslight’s device simulation packages of APSYS, PICS3D and LASTIP.
The following is a brief summary of recent upgrade and enhancements:

• The most popular and easy-to-use graphic user interface (GUI)
  program LayerBuilder program has been substantially upgraded
  to account for nonplanar layer structure.
  Previous versions LayerBuilder can only handle leveled
  layers while leaving all other tasks of structural variation
  to the more sophisticated GUI GeoEditor.
• The CSuprem 3D mesh interface has been established for VCSEL modeling.
  The latest 3D meshing technology to handle unstructured mesh,
  the plane bending method, has been used to set up 3D VCSEL structures.
  As a result, detailed 3D geometries
  like those in realistic VCSELs can be taken into account.
• Version 2012 improves on modeling of
  polarization-dependent spontaneous recombination.
  Accurate computation of TE, TM and TE/TM-mixed spontaneous
  recombination/emission is now automatically generated in all
  simulations. This benefits all devices where spontaneous emission plays an important role.
• SPICE mixmode simulation interface has been established so that simutaneous
  simulation of circuit and device can be performed routinely.
  Currently, the mixmode interface supports CSPICE, a Crosslight version
  of SPICE but with minor customization, any other versions of SPICE
  can be supported.
• AM, FM and RIN noise spectrum modeling is now available in PICS3D.
• Miniband transport model is further enhanced to efficiently
  model quantum dots and MQW superlattices embedded in devices
  such as solar cells and LEDs.
• Polarization charge-dependent potential has been incorporated in
  quantum dot models of GaN based devices, improving the self-consistency
  of these simulations.
• Field-dependent velocity models for GaN and related material have
  been improved and upgraded.
• Several more recent impact ionization models have been added to the device
  simulators.
• Polarization charge model in arbitrary structures have been
  further improved to include different crystal orientation in different
  regions of a device. As a demo, complex nanowire/nanorod of nitride
  material have been demonstrated in 3D, using the CSuprem mesh builder
  as mesh generator.
• PICS3D: laser cavity set up is more convenient so that any configuration
  of micro-cavity can be simulated. A micro cavity photonic crystal laser
  diode has been demonstrated in 3D as a result of this improvement.
• Self-heating thermal model substantially improved to ensure
  accurate conservation of heating energy. The thermal model is also more
  flexible in dealing with non-convergence caused by strong local heatings.
• Significant enhancement of data plotting capabilities in device simulators.
  These include bias-dependent plots such as recombination terms,
  optical losses and impact ionization rates, at a particular spatial
  point as well as integrated over the whole device.