Investigation of electron effective mass in C.B. of dilute nitride semiconductors

electronics

Dilute Nitride Semiconductor (low nitrogen-containing ternary and quaternary alloys) have recently attracted much attention due to their fundamental properties promising for device applications in optoelectronics and photonics such as highly efficient near infrared lasers, multi-junction solar cells, as well as heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). The effect of N on the electronic band structure in dilute III-N-V nitrides has been explained in terms of a band anticrossing interaction between highly localized N states and the extended conduction band states of the semiconductor matrix. The interaction leads to a splitting of the conduction band into two non-parabolic subbands. The downward shift of the lower subband edge relative to the valence band is responsible for the reduction of the fundamental band gap. The profound effects on the optical and electrical properties of the dilute nitrides such as the significant increase in the electron effective mass can be quantitatively account for using this model.

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