Band Structure of Semiconductors

The chapter focuses on the band structure of semiconductors. The major elementary semiconductors such as Si, Ge, and diamond crystallize in a diamond cubic structure in which all atoms are tetrahedrally coordinated with the O h point group symmetry. The band structures of these crystals are made from a hybridization of the elemental electronic states. The semiconductor band structures can be calculated using a variety of methods such as tight binding, pseudopotential, and the k • p methods. All these methods use the expansion solutions made from the sums of Bloch functions or basis sets.