Elastic lattice deformation and piezoelectric fields in wurtzite type II-VI semiconductor heterostructures

We theoretically investigate the strain and piezoelectric fields of lattice mismatched semiconductor heterostructures made of materials with hexagonal crystallographic symmetry. Our model can be used in order to determine the lattice deformation and the piezoelectric fields of pseudomorphic as well as free-standing superlattices of wurtzite structure. We consider and discuss the case of free-standing CdS/CdSe superlattices with coherent heterointerfaces between the constituent superlattice layers in detail. We show that our calculations correctly describe the experimental evidences concerning the piezoelectric fields and are in very good agreement with the measured data reported by M.P. Halsall et al.