Publication
Title
30-band $k\cdot p$ model of electron and hole states in silicon quantum wells
Author
Abstract
 We modeled the electron and hole states in Si/SiO2 quantum wells within a basis of standing waves using the 30-band k . p theory. The hard-wall confinement potential is assumed, and the influence of the peculiar band structure of bulk silicon on the quantum-well sub-bands is explored. Numerous spurious solutions in the conduction-band and valence-band energy spectra are found and are identified to be of two types: (1) spurious states which have large contributions of the bulk solutions with large wave vectors (the high-k spurious solutions) and (2) states which originate mainly from the spurious valley outside the Brillouin zone (the extravalley spurious solutions). An algorithm to remove all those nonphysical solutions from the electron and hole energy spectra is proposed. Furthermore, slow and oscillatory convergence of the hole energy levels with the number of basis functions is found and is explained by the peculiar band mixing and the confinement in the considered quantum well. We discovered that assuming the hard-wall potential leads to numerical instability of the hole states computation. Nonetheless, allowing the envelope functions to exponentially decay in a barrier of finite height is found to improve the accuracy of the computed hole states.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Physical review : B : condensed matter and materials physics. - Lancaster, Pa, 1998 - 2015
Publication
Lancaster, Pa : 2013
ISSN
1098-0121 [print]
1550-235X [online]
Volume/pages
88:20(2013), 8 p.
Article Reference
205306
ISI
000327161500007
Medium
E-only publicatie
Full text (Publishers DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
 Faculty/Department Research group Publication type Subject Affiliation Publications with a UAntwerp address