The electronic contribution to the elastic constants in strained layer quantum well superlattices of non-parabolic semiconductors with graded interfaces under magnetic quantization: Simplified theory and suggestion for experimental determination

In this paper, we study the electronic contribution to the elastic constants in strained layer quantum well superlattices of non-parabolic semiconductors with graded structures under strong magnetic quantization and compare the. same with that of the constituent materials, by formulating the appropriate dispersion laws. It is found, taking InSb/GaSb quantum well strained superlattices of non-parabolic semiconductors as an example, that the carrier contribution to the second- and third-order elastic constants oscillates both with the electronic concentration and the inverse quantizing magnetic field in different manners together with the fact that the nature of oscillations is totally band structure dependent. We have also suggested an experimental method for determining the electronic contribution to the elastic constants in low-dimensional materials having arbitrary dispersion laws. In addition, the well-known results for bulk specimens of wide-gap stress-free materials have been obtained as special cases from our generalized formulation under certain limiting conditions. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.