Temperature‐Dependent Effective Masses in III‐V Compound Semiconductors

A study is made of the temperature dependence of the effective masses of carriers for some III‐V compound semiconductors essentially based on the model band structures of Kane and Penn. Using the nearly free electron model of Penn, we obtain an analytical expression for the matrix element P appearing in Kane's expression. The material dependence of P is hence explained. It is further seen that the temperature dependent effective mass is accounted, for, to a very large extent by the temperature dependence of the energy gap. This apart, the contribution of the electron‐phonon interaction term to the temperature dependence of the effective mass is shown to be significant.