Effects of compositional disorder upon electronic and lattice properties of GaxIn1-xAs

The empirical pseudopotential method within the virtual crystal approximation for the entire range of alloy concentrations of cubic GaxIn1-xAs is presented. The atomic form factors have been deduced empirically by fitting the band structure of parent compounds to experimental data available from the literature. To make allowance for the compositional disorder, a correction to the alloy potential has been introduced. Illustrative results of calculated electronic and lattice properties indicate that the contribution of the compositional disorder plays an important role and must be included to obtain a meaningful agreement with the experiment. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.