Abstract—A quantitative measure of how much conduction sub-bands calculated with 8 band k.p Hamiltonian deviate from the parabolic band approximation model is presented for AlInN/GaInN (grown on GaN substrate) quantum well structure. We calculated the dispersion relationship of the conduction sub-bands using a numerical solution by the Finite Difference Method (FDM) of a 8 band Hamiltonian based on the k,p method and compare them with the sub-bands calculated with the single band effective mass equation. The differences between the two sets of dispersion relationships are found bigger for narrower quantum wells and moderate to small for larger quantum well width. The differences were larger for larger values of the parallel wave vector. For narrow quantum wells with width approaching 3 nm single band effective mass equation cannot produce very accurate results for conduction sub-bands.

Index Terms—GaN, AlN, nonparabolicity, conduction subband

Cite: Saumya Biswas, Md. Shofiqul Islam, Ifana Mahbub, and Farasatul Adnan, "Numerical Investigation of the Effects of Conduction Band Nonparabolicity on the Conduction Sub-band Dispersion Relationships in a Al0.88In0.12N/Ga0.9," Lecture Notes on Photonics and Optoelectronics , Vol.1, No.1, pp.1-5,  June 2013. doi: 10.12720/lnpo.1.1.1-5