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Previous: 3.7.1 Effective Electron Mass in Unstrained Si Up: 3.7 The kp method Next: Energy Dispersion of the Conduction Band Minimum of |
Having discussed strain-induced shifts of the conduction bands in Section 3.6.1, here the effect of strain on the effective electron mass in the lowest conduction band is analyzed.
Equation (3.47) neglects the lifting of
the degeneracy of the lowest two conduction bands induced by shear strain and
describes the energy shift of the conduction bands as a whole. Apart from
the direction of the wavevector
indicating the location of the
valley no information is required in (3.47) to determine
the shift of the valley minima. As a consequence, the shift of a valley is
independent of the exact value of the wavevector
, and all
points belonging to a particular valley experience the same shift. As the
effective mass relates to the curvature of the energy band, which is not
changed by an overall shift in energy, equation (3.47) implies that
the effective electron mass is not affected by strain.
There is clear experimental evidence that shear strain changes the effective
masses of electrons in the lowest conduction band [Hensel65] and also
the exciton spectrum of Si [Laude71]. In order to explain these
experiments, the splitting of the two lowest conduction bands at the
symmetry point induced by shear strain (see Section 3.6.2) has to be
taken into account.
From (3.52) the lifting of the degeneracy at the
point can be
calculated using the deformation potential constant
. However, since
(3.52) is only valid for the symmetry point
, it cannot be used
to predict the effect of strain on the valley
minima
. To determine the change of the effective
electron mass under shear strain, a degenerate kp theory around the symmetry point
must be applied, since the two conduction bands
and
are degenerate in the unstrained lattice.
Using the theory of invariants [Luttinger56] Bir and Pikus [Bir74]
determined a suitable choice of matrices describing the Hamiltonian at the points
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(3.68) |
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(3.69) |
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(3.70) |
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(3.71) |
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(3.72) |
Assuming that this expansion around the point is valid up to the
minimum of the lowest conduction band at
, the constant
can be related to
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Previous: 3.7.1 Effective Electron Mass in Unstrained Si Up: 3.7 The kp method Next: Energy Dispersion of the Conduction Band Minimum of |