Empirical fit to band discontinuities and barrier heights in III–V alloy systems

We present a figure summarizing the variation of conduction band discontinuity, valence band discontinuity, and gold Schottky barrier height for binary and ternary III–V semiconductors. This figure, which applies to unstrained material, makes use of the property of transitivity in band alignments, and the observed experimental correlation between barrier heights and band gap discontinuities, to consolidate a wide range of data. The figure should be very useful in the design of novel heterostructure electronic and optical devices.