Effect of k.p Band Structure Models on the Electron Lucky Drift in Zinc-Blende-Type Semiconductor

Abstract

We have studied the various k.p models including Kane’s model, the 8×8 matrix model and 14×14 matrix models. We include the nonparabolic terms in the energy formula using each of these models where we took into account the fourth and sixth order terms in the energy‐wavevector expansion. We then calculate the electron impact ionization threshold energy in terms of these nonparabolic parameters for some of zinc‐blende‐type semiconductor. Using the impact ionization energy, we extract the lucky drift ionization parameters. Our calculation shows that the 14×14 matrix model gives the closest result to that of the ab initio calculation of impact ionization threshold energy and that of Monte Carlo empirical pesudpotintial calculation. The advantage of our work is that by using simple derivation and computation, we manage to get a closer result to that obtained by heavy computational resources.