Chargebased

Chargebased refers to modeling, analysis, or design approaches in electronics and related fields that treat electric charge as a fundamental state variable. In a chargebased framework, the primary quantities are the charge stored on conductors and at interfaces, with currents interpreted as the time derivative of charge and voltages derived from the charge distribution via capacitances. This view emphasizes charge conservation and the relationship q = ∫ i dt, and it accommodates nonlinear or distributed capacitances where voltage alone does not fully describe system behavior.

In practice, chargebased models describe how charge accumulates, distributes, and changes over time in devices and circuits. They often use charge balance equations and track charge on nodes, plates, junctions, or traps, accounting for phenomena like depletion, inversion, trapping, leakage, and nonlinear capacitance. In semiconductor device modeling, chargebased methods are used to describe MOS transistors with attention to the actual charge in the channel and at interfaces, which can improve accuracy for short-channel and nonuniform devices. In memory technologies, such as DRAM and flash, the storage mechanism is inherently charge-based, making these models a natural fit for simulating retention and readout behavior. Chargebased approaches are also applied to capacitive sensors and other systems where charge storage and transfer dominate dynamics.

Advantages of chargebased modeling include stronger physical intuition and explicit charge conservation, which can improve accuracy in time-domain simulations and in regimes with significant capacitive effects. Limitations can include higher computational complexity and the need for detailed charge–voltage relationships to drive the models. See also capacitance, charge conservation, MOSFET models, and capacitor-based analysis.