Electronic structure of ZnO wurtzite quantum wires

The electronic structure and optical properties of ZnO wurtzite quantum wires with radius R≥3 nm are studied in the framework of six-band effective-mass envelope function theory. The hole effective-mass parameters of ZnO wurtzite material are calculated by the empirical pseudopotential method. It is found that the electron states are either two-fold or four-fold degenerate. There is a dark exciton effect when the radius R of the ZnO quantum wires is in the range of [3,19.1] nm (dark range in our model). The dark ranges of other wurtzite semiconductor quantum wires are calculated for comparison. The dark range becomes smaller when the |Δ<Subscript>so</Subscript>| is larger, which also happens in the quantum-dot systems. The linear polarization factor of ZnO quantum wires is larger when the temperature is higher. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006