Quantification of the effects of misfit strain on the energy states of zinc-blende spherical core/shell quantum dots

• DOI: 10.1007/s40042-021-00175-2
• Publication Date: 2021-06-07T07:04:57Z
• Authors: Anh Tay Nguyen; Youjung Seo; Seoung-Hwan Park; Y. Eugene Pak
• Keywords: Elasticity; Lattice (music)

The effects of lattice-mismatched strain on the optical properties of type-I core/shell quantum dot nanostructures are investigated theoretically using the simple continuum elasticity and the effective mass quantum mechanics models. The misfit strains are calculated based on the spherically anisotropic linear elasticity solution for a misfitted inclusion embedded in a finite matrix. The effective mass quantum mechanics model for the case of a CdSe/CdS core/shell quantum dot (QD) shows that the subband energy is blue shifted by the compressive strain in the QD core resulting from the lattice-mismatched heterojunction. Using a very simple spherically anisotropic strain model, we calculated the subband, interband transition, and binding energies for a zinc-blende (ZB) CdSe/CdS QD. These results compare favorably with those obtained from the finite element analysis (FEA) considering the rectilinear cubic crystal anisotropy.