Complex Band Structures: From Parabolic to Elliptic Approximation

Author

Guan, Ximeng ; Kim, Donghyun ; Saraswat, Krishna C. ; Wong, H. -S Philip

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA, USA

Volume

32

Issue

9

fYear

2011

Firstpage

1296

Lastpage

1298

Abstract

We show that the conventional nonparabolic approximation of real band structures can be modified and generalized to approximate the complex band structures of common semiconductors with a significant improvement of accuracy against the parabolic approximation. The improvement is due to the inherent elliptic nature of the complex band structures in the vicinity of the bandgap, which has a critical impact on the band-to-band tunneling probability. Important parameters are extracted and tabulated for Si, Ge, GaAs, and GaSb, with a maximum error of <; 1.4% compared to the numerical target.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; approximation theory; elemental semiconductors; energy gap; gallium arsenide; gallium compounds; germanium; probability; silicon; tunnelling; GaAs; GaSb; Ge; Si; band-to-band tunneling probability; bandgap; complex band structures; elliptic approximation; nonparabolic approximation; parabolic approximation; Approximation methods; Effective mass; Photonic band gap; Semiconductor device modeling; Silicon; Tunneling; Band-to-band tunneling (BtBT); complex band structure; nonparabolicity;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2011.2160143

Filename

5976369