Calculating the band structure of 3C‑SiC using sp3d5s* + Δ model

We report on a semiempirical tight-binding model for 3C-SiC including the effect of sp3d5s* orbitals and spin–orbit coupling (∆). In this work, we illustrate in detail the method to develop such a model for semiconductors with zincblende structure, based on Slater–Koster integrals, and we explain the optimization method used to fit the experimental results with such a model. This method shows high accuracy for the evaluation of 3C-SiC band diagram in terms of both the experimental energy levels at high symmetry points and the effective masses.