Tetrahedral structures and phase transitions in III-V semiconductors

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Abstract
The BC8 structure (body-centered cubic with eight atoms per cell) is a known pressure-induced modification of both silicon and germanium. However, its diatomic analogue [the SC16 structure (a simple cubic lattice with a basis of 16 atoms)] has never been found in compound semiconductors. We find from total-energy pseudopotential calculations that the SC16 structure is a stable high-pressure polymorph of the III-V semiconductors GaAs, InAs, and AlSb. We report ab initio calculations of the structural, electronic, and vibrational properties of SC16-GaAs. The wurtzite structure is found to be unstable at all pressures for each compound considered. We consider possible transition routes consistent with our high-pressure x-ray diffraction results and propose that the formation of the SC16 structure in compounds is kinetically inhibited by the formation of wrong bonds at the structural transition.