Band structures of laterally coupled quantum dots, accounting for electromechanical effects

Abstract

In a series of recent papers we demonstrated that coupled electro-mechanical effects can lead to pronounced contributions in band structure calculations of low dimensional semiconductor nanostructures (LDSNs) such as quantum dots, wires, and even wells. Some such effects are essentially nonlinear. Both strain and piezoelectric effects have been used as tuning parameters for the optical response of LDSNs in photonics, band gap engineering and other applications. However, these effects have been largely neglected in literature while laterally coupled quantum dots (QDs) have been studied. The superposition of electron wave functions in these QDs become important in the design of optoelectronic devices as well in tayloring properties of QDs in other applications areas. At the same time, laterally grown QDs coupled with electric and mechanical fields are becoming increasingly important in many applications of LDSN-based systems, in particular where the tunneling of electron wave function through wetting layer (WL) becomes important and the distance between the dots is treated as a tuning parameter. Indeed, as electric and elastic effects are often significant in LDSNs, it is reasonable to expect that the separation between the QDs may also be used as a tuning parameter in the application of logic devices, for example, OR gates, AND gates and others. In this contribution, by using the fully coupled model of electroelasticity, we build on our previous results while analyzing the influence of these effects on optoelectronic properties of QDs. Results are reported for III-V type semiconductors with a major focus given to GaN/AlN based QD systems.