ELECTRONIC-STRUCTURES OF THE ZINCBLENDE GAN GA1-XALXN COMPRESSIVELY STRAINED SUPERLATTICES AND QUANTUM WELLS/

The electronic structures of the zinc-blende GaN/Ga0.85Al0.15N compres sively strained superlattices and quantum wells are investigated using a 6 x 6 Hamiltonian model (including the heavy hole, light hole and s pin-orbit splitting band). The energy bands, wavefunctions and optical transition matrix elements are calculated. It is found that the light hole couples with the spin-orbit splitting state even at the k=0 poin t, resulting in the hybrid states. The heavy hole remains a pure heavy hole state at k=0. The optical transitions from the hybrid valence st ates to the conduction states are determined by the transitions of the light hole and spin-orbit splitting states to the conduction states. The transitions from the heavy hole, light hole and spin-orbit splitti ng states to the conduction states obey the selection rule Delta n=0. The band structures obtained in this work will be valuable in designin g GaN/GaAlN based optoelectronic devices. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limi ted