Limiting Debye temperature behavior following from cryogenic heat capacity data for group-IV, III-V, and II-VI materials

We perform analyses of cryogenic heat capacity data sets, that are available from thermo-physical literature for group-IV materials (diamond, Si, Ge, and 3C-SiC), a variety of III–V materials (BN, BP, BAs, GaN, GaP, GaAs, GaSb, InP, InAs, InSb), and several II–VI materials (ZnO, ZnS, ZnSe, CdS, and CdTe). A prominent new result of the present study consists above all in a general high-precision formula, , for the limiting behavior of the Debye temperature in the liquid helium–hydrogen region. The actual magnitudes of limiting Debye temperatures, , in combination with the associated (throughout positive) curve shape coefficients, and , are given in unambiguous way in terms of the three lowest-order heat capacity coefficients involved by conventional Taylor series expansions for lattice heat capacities within the cryogenic range up to temperatures of order . Among the variety of presently specified calorimetric values, particularly those obtained for a series of wide-bandgap materials may be of considerable interest. These are about 1110 K for 3C-SiC, 1860 for c-BN, 950 K for BP, 592 K for GaN, 429 or 392 K for isotopically modified samples 64Zn16O and 68Zn18O, respectively, 414 K for natural ZnO, 349 K for ZnS, 276 K for ZnSe, and 236 K for CdS.