Importance of second-order piezoelectric effects in zincblende semiconductors

Abstract

We show that the piezoelectric effect that describes the emergence of an electric field in response to a crystal deformation in III-V semiconductors such as GaAs and InAs has strong contributions from second-order effects that have been neglected so far. We calculate the second-order piezoelectric tensors using density functional theory and obtain the piezoelectric field for [111]-oriented In${}_x$Ga${}_{1-x}$As quantum wells of realistic dimensions and concentration $x$. We find that the linear and the quadratic piezoelectric coefficients have the opposite effect on the field, and for large strains the quadratic terms even dominate. Thus, the piezoelectric field turns out to be a rare example of a physical quantity for which the first- and second-order contributions are of comparable magnitude.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

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• Spontaneous polarization and piezoelectric constants of III-V nitrides
• Systematic treatment of displacements, strains and electric fields in density-functional perturbation theory
• Non-linear macroscopic polarization in III-V nitride alloys
• Absence of correlation between built-in electric dipole moment and quantum Stark effect in InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dots

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