The electronic structures of MN and InN wurtzite nanowires

We derive the relations between the analogous seven Luttinger-Kohn parameters and six Rashba-Sheka-Pikus parameters for wurtzite semiconductors, which can be used to investigate the electronic structures of some wurtzite semiconductors such as AIN and InN materials, including their low-dimensional structures. As an example, the electronic structures of AIN and InN nanowires are calculated by using the derived relations and six band effective-mass k.p theory. Interestingly, it is found that the ground hole state of AIN nanowires is always a pure S state whether the radius R is small (1 nm) or large (6 nm), and the ground hole state only contains vertical bar Z Bloch orbital component. Therefore, AIN nanowires is the ideal low-dimensional material for the production of purely linearly polarized it light, unlike ZnO nanowires, which emits plane-polarized a light. However, the ground hole state of InN nanowires can be tuned from a pure S state to a mixed P state when the radius R is larger than 2.6 nm, which will make the polarized properties of the lowest optical transition changes from linearly polarized pi light to plane-polarized sigma light. Meanwhile, the valence band structures of InN nanowires will present strong band crossings when the radius R increases to 6 nm, and through the detail analysis of possible transitions of InN nanowires at the Gamma point, we find some of the neighbor optical transitions are almost degenerate, because the spin-orbit splitting energy of InN material is only 0.001 eV. Therefore, it is concluded that the electronic structures and optical properties of InN nanowires present great differences with that of AIN nanowires. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.