Barrier Thickness and Hydrostatic Pressure Effects on Hydrogenic Impurity States in Wurtzite GaN/AlxGa1- xN Strained Quantum Dots

Abstract

Within the framework of the effective mass approximation, barrier thickness and hydrostatic pressure effects on the ground-state binding energy of hydrogenic impurity are investigated in wurtzite (WZ) GaN/AlxGa1-xN strained quantum dots (QDs) by means of a variational approach. The hydrostatic pressure dependence of physical parameters such as electron effective mass, energy band gaps, lattice constants, and dielectric constants is considered in the calculations. Numerical results show that the donor binding energy for any impurity position increases when the hydrostatic pressure increases. The donor binding energy for the impurity located at the central of the QD increases firstly and then begins to drop quickly with the decrease of QD radius (height) in strong built-in electric fields. Moreover, the influence of barrier thickness along the QD growth direction and Al concentration on donor binding energy is also investigated. In addition, we also found that impurity positions have great influence on the donor binding energy.