Substantial contribution of effective mass variation to electron- acoustic phonon interaction via deformation potential in semiconductor nanostructures

Using the approach of deformed ions and the tight binding, we have demonstrated that the interaction of electrons confined in a nanostructure with acoustic phonons in a cubic crystal is described by a deformation potential tensor (DPT) whose symmetry is determined by the geometry of the nanostructure. Here in, we present additional contribution to the DPT which is caused by the deformation dependence of the electron effective mass and it increases as L−2 when the characteristic size of a nanostructure, L, decreases. For narrow GaAs-based quantum wells, this contribution is comparable with and can overcome that from the usual deformation potential coupling.