Calculation of Electronic States in Semiconductor Heterostructures with an Empirical spds* Tight-Binding Model

We illustrate how the tight-binding formalism can be used to accurately compute the electronic states in semiconductor quantum wells and superlattices. To this end we consider a recently developed empirical tight-binding model which carefully reproduces ab initio pseudopotential calculations and experimental results of bulk semiconductors. The present approach is particularly suited both for short-period superlattices and large and complex unit cells where the transferability of the hopping parameters is required. First applications for ultrathin GaAs/AlAs superlattices and InGaAs/AlAs heterostructures are presented and discussed.