ELECTRONIC BAND STRUCTURES AND EFFECTIVE-MASS PARAMETERS OF WURTZITE GAN AND INN

The electronic band structures of wurtzite GaN and InN are calculated by the empirical pseudopotential method (EPM) with the form factors ad justed to reproduce band features which agree with recent experimental data and accurate first-principles calculations. The electron and hol e effective masses at the Gamma point are obtained using a parabolic l ine fit. Further, using the effective-mass Hamiltonian and the cubic a pproximation for wurtzite semiconductors, band edge dispersion at the Gamma point obtained using the k.p method is fitted to that calculated using the EPM by adjusting the effective-mass parameters. Thus, we de rived important band structure parameters such as the Luttinger-like p arameters for GaN and InN which will be useful for material design in wide-gap nitride-based semiconductor lasers employing InGaN. The resul ts also showed that the cubic approximation is fairly successful in th e analysis of valence band structures for wurtzite nitrides. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(98)05503-0].