Determination of Size-Dependent Energy Bandgap of Germanium (Ge) nanostructure

Abstract

Energy band gap is fundamentally important for the properties of a solid. Most of a material’s behaviors, such as conductivity, optical transitions, or electronic transitions, depend on it. Any change of the energy band gap may significantly alter the material’s physical and chemical properties. Change of the energy band gap occurs when the size of a solid is reduced to the nanometer length scale. Germanium is a semiconductor element and it has indirect energy band gap when it is in its bulk structure. Its energy band gap changes from indirect gap to direct gap after its size reduced to the nanometer scale which is responsible to many novel properties of the material. In this research paper, I investigated dependence of energy band gap of germanium nanostructure (the case of quantum dot) on the size of the dot and the findings are in agreement with other theoretical and research results. Keywords: Energy gap; novel properties; size; nanometer scale; quantum dot DOI : 10.7176/APTA/77-01 Publication date :May 31 st 2019