The spontaneous polarization, dynamical Born charges, and piezoelectric constants of the III-V nitrides AlN, GaN, and InN are studied ab initio using the Berry-phase approach to polarization in solids. The piezoelectric constants are found to be up to ten times larger than in conventional III-V and II-VI semiconductor compounds and comparable to those of ZnO. Further properties at variance with those of conventional III-V compounds are the sign of the piezoelectric constants (positive as in II-VI compounds) and the very large spontaneous polarization. [S0163-1829(97)51740-1]

The macroscopic nonlinear pyroelectric polarization of wurtzite Al x Ga 1−x N, In x Ga 1−x N and Al x In 1−x N ternary compounds (large spontaneous polarization and piezoelectric coupling) dramatically affects the optical and electrical properties of multilayered Al(In)GaN/GaN hetero-, nanostructures and devices, due to the huge built-in electrostatic fields and bound interface charges caused by gradients in polarization at surfaces and heterointerfaces. Models of

We provide explicit rules to calculate the nonlinear polarization for nitride alloys of arbitrary composition, and hence, the bound sheet charge induced by polarization discontinuity at the interfaces between different alloy and binary (epi)layers. We then present experimental results and simulations of polarization-related quantities in selected nitride-alloy-based heterostructure systems. The agreement of experiment and simulation, also in comparison to previous approaches, strongly suggests that the macroscopic polarization of nitride alloys is indeed nonlinear as a function of composition.

Huge built-in electric fields have been predicted to exist in wurtzite III-V nitrides thin films and multilayers. Such fields originate from heterointerface discontinuities of the macroscopic bulk polarization of the nitrides. Here we discuss the background theory, the role of spontaneous polarization in this context, and the practical implications of built-in polarization fields in nitride nanostructures. To support our arguments, we present detailed self-consistent tight-binding simulations of typical nitride quantum well structures in which polarization effects are dominan