Lassen, B., Willatzen, M., Barettin, D., Melnik, R.V.N., and Lew Yan Voon, L.C.
Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Vol 107, # 012008 (pp. 1--9), 2008
We study the impact of using the fully coupled electromechanical equations including piezoelectric effect and spontaneous polarization as compared to the semi-coupled approach, where the strain is solved first without piezoelectric coupling and then inserted into the equation for the electric potential. We show that for circular GaN/AlN quantum dots the fully coupled approach is needed fordots with a radius comparable to or larger than the height, however, when the radius is smaller than the height the semi-coupled approach is sufficient. We highlight this by studying the effect on the electronic structure using an effective mass approximation.
Keywords: coupled electromechanical effects, low dimensional nanostructures, mathematical modelling, quantum dots