Effects of strain on the electron effective mass in GaN and AlN

Stress is known to strongly alter the effective mass in semiconductors, changing the mobility of carriers. Transport measurements on AlGaN/GaN heterostructures indicated a large increase in mobility under tensile strain [M. Azize and T. Palacios, J. Appl. Phys. 108, 023707 (2010)]. Using first-principles methods, we calculate the variation of electron effective mass in GaN and AlN under hydrostatic and biaxial stress. Unexpected trends are found, which are explained within k·p theory through a variation of the interband momentum matrix elements. The magnitude of the effective-mass reduction is too small to explain the experimentally reported increase in mobility.