Diffusion relaxation limit of a bipolar hydrodynamic model for semiconductors

In the paper, we discuss the relaxation limit of a bipolar isentropic hydrodynamical models for semiconductors with small momentum relaxation time. With the help of the Maxwell iteration, we prove that, as the relaxation time tends to zero, periodic initial-value problems of a scaled bipolar isentropic hydrodynamic model have unique smooth solutions existing in the time interval where the classical drift-diffusion model has smooth solutions. Meanwhile, we justify a formal derivation of the corresponding drift-diffusion model from the bipolar hydrodynamic model. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.