A Simple Method to Evaluate Structural Stability of Group IV and III-V Semiconductors

The structural stabilities of bulk Si, Ge, and GaAs are discussed based on the total energy evaluated by the summation of the band structure energy and the short-range repulsive potential between ions. The band structure energy is calculated by means of the simple tight-binding method. The tight-binding parameters are determined so as to fit to the results of a pseude potential calculation and Harrison's model is employed to include the influence of lattice deformation. The short-range-force is assumed to be of the exponential form and parameters are determined so as to reproduce an experimental value of bulk modulus. This treatment qualitatively well describes structural properties in spite of the simple computational procedure and roughly gives the known variation of the total energy for a <100> uniaxial strain. This method is able to be applied to an investigation of the structural stabilities of superlattices, for example, a strained layer superlattice consisting of hetero-semiconductors.