Alloy effects in GaInN/GaN heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper investigates the electronic structure of GaInN/GaN heterostructures, revealing that traditional approximation methods fail due to large band offsets and heavy effective masses, unlike in GaInAs/GaAs systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates the limitations of the Virtual Crystal Approximation for GaInN/GaN heterostructures caused by large band offsets and carrier masses.

Findings

Virtual Crystal Approximation is ineffective for GaInN/GaN heterostructures.

Effective masses and band offsets significantly influence electronic structure modeling.

Approximation works well for GaInAs/GaAs heterostructures.

Abstract

We show that the large band offsets between GaN and InN and the heavy carrier effective masses preclude the use of the Virtual Crystal Approximation to describe the electronic structure of Ga_(1-x)In_(x)N/GaN heterostructures while this approximation works very well for the Ga_(1-x)In_(x)As/GaAs heterostructures.