Effective masses of electrons and heavy holes in InAs, InSb, GaSb, GaAs and some of their ternary compounds

A survey is carried out for both electron and heavy-hole effective masses i n InAs, InSb, GaAs, GaSb and some of their ternary compounds. Our computati ons are based on the pseudopotential method. To make allowance for the chem ical disorder, the virtual crystal approximation is used, including a corre ction to the alloy potential. The agreement between our theoretical results and the experiment is very satisfying. A non-linearity dependence of the e lectron effective mass on the molar fraction has been shown for the ternary alloys under consideration, which indicates the alloying effect. This non- linearity disappears in the case of the heavy-hole effective mass for GaInS b. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.