Determination of the Linear Pressure Coefficients of Semiconductor Bandgaps

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Abstract
Measurement of the pressure dependence of the direct bandgap of a tetrahedral semiconductor shows a pronounced sublinearity. This is explained by the stiffening of the lattice under pressure, so that if the pressure is converted into change of lattice constants using a suitable equation of state, the relation between bandgap and lattice constant is found to be linear within experimental (and theoretical) error. However, fitting to the pressure data, many authors use a parabolic equation, Eg(P) = Eg(0) + aP – bP2. We show that this gives a systematic error in the determination of the linear term a which increases with the pressure range of the experiment. GaAs provides a typical example of the systematic error. We find that the true linear pressure coefficient of GaAs is near 11.5 meV/kbar in agreement with the recent low‐pressure measurement of Perlin et al. rather than the long‐accepted value of 10.7 meV/kbar.