Electronic band structure pseudopotential calculation of wurtzite III-nitride materials

Abstract

The electronic properties of the wurtzite III-nitride compound semiconductors GaN, InN and AlN are studied within the empirical pseudopotential approach. An analytical function for both symmetric and antisymmetric parts of the pseudopotential with adjustable coefficients has been reported. Using this model the selected features of these materials such as energy gap, bandwidth, crystal-field splitting energy, Luttinger-like parameters, and effective masses are calculated and compared to experimental and recently published theoretical results and the comparisons show a good agreement.