Band structures of cylindrical AlN/GaN quantum dots with fully coupled piezoelectric models

Prabhakar, S., Melnik, R.

 Nanoengineering: Fabrication, Properties, Optics, and Devices VII, Eds. E.A. Dobisz and L.A. Eldada,  Proceedings SPIE (Optics+Photonics Conference, San Diego), Vol. 7764, 77640A-1--77640A-6, 2010

Abstract:

We study the coupled electro-mechanical effects in the band structure calculations of low dimensional semiconductor nanostructures (LDSNs) such as AlN/GaN quantum dots. Some effects in these systems are essentially nonlinear. Strain, piezoelectric effects, eigenvalues and wave functions of a quantum dot have been used as tuning parameters for the optical response of LDSNs in photonics, band gap engineering and other applications. However, with a few noticeable exceptions, the influence of piezoelectric effects in the electron wave functions in Quantum Dots (QDs) studied with fully coupled models has been largely neglected in the literature. In this paper, by using the fully coupled model of electroelasticity, we analyze the piezoelectric effects into the band structure of cylindrical quantum dots. Results are reported for III-V type semiconductors with a major focus given to AlN/GaN based QD systems.

Keywords: fully coupled models of piezoelectricity, low dimensional nanostructures, tuning parameters, quantum dots, nonlinear effects.