Group-IV semiconductor compounds

Properties of ordered group-IV compounds containing carbon, silicon, and germanium are calculated within the local density approximation. Twenty-seven fully relaxed compounds represented by seven different compound structures are compared and, with the exception of SiC, all compounds are found to be metastable. Two trends emerge: carbon-germanium bonds are disfavored, and compounds that have carbon on a common sublattice are the least unbound because of their relatively low strain. When carbon shares a sublattice with silicon or germanium, the large strain results in a narrowing of the band gap, and in some cases the compound is metallic. The most promising structures with the lowest excess energy contain carbon on one sublattice and although they do not lattice match to silicon, they match rather well to silicon carbide. copyright 1997 The American Physical Society