Band structure of semiconductors under high stress

Abstract

We pursue a nonperturbative approach to the calculation of the electronic structure of crystals under high strain, in which all input parameters are determined from just selected properties of the unstrained crystal. The method is applied to calculate the band structure of diamond- and zinc-blende-type semiconductors under strain, with particular application to Ge, Si, and GaAs. The strain dependence in the absence of spin-orbit interactions of the energies and matrix elements of selected transitions are presented for the three crystals. Although most of the calculated quantities display linear variations with strain, there are a number of notable exceptions as well, where nonlinear behavior is predicted.