Anomalous phonon characteristics of unconventional novel III-N superlattices
Comprehensive results of atomic vibrations are reported in the unconventional short-period zb BN/GaN superlatices (SLs) by exploiting a rigid-ion-model and taking into account both the short- and long-range Coulomb interactions. Besides anisotropic mode behavior of optical phonons, our study provided evidence of acoustic-mode anti-crossing, mini-gap formation, confinement as well as BN-like modes falling within the gap that separates optical phonon bands of the two materials. A bond-polarizability scheme is employed within the second-nearest-neighbor linear-chain model to simulate the Raman intensity profiles of BN/GaN SLs revealing major expected trends of the vibrational characteristics observed experimentally in many conventional superlattice systems while eliciting some interesting contrasts.