Electronic structure of (0 0 1) GaN/AlN quantum wells

The electronic structure of (0 0 1) GaN/AlN quantum wells at the Γ ¯ point of the Brillouin zone is studied for 2 ⩽ n ⩽ 50, where n is the number of principal layers of GaN in the well region. The calculations are based on a surface Green-function matching analysis together with two different empirical tight-binding models. We study the influence of the strain and the spin–orbit coupling on the quantum well states.