Valley splitting by extended zone effective mass approximation incorporating strain in silicon

We propose a main mechanism of large valley splitting experimentally observed at the interface of buried oxide (BOX)/silicon-on-insulator (SOI) structures. Silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors fabricated on a SIMOX (001) substrate, which is a kind of the SOI substrate, that is annealed at high temperatures for a long time are known to exhibit large valley splitting, but the origin of this splitting has long been unknown. Extended zone effective-mass approximation predicts that strain significantly affects valley splitting. In this study, we analyzed valley splitting based on this theory and found that the shear strain along [110] of approximately 5% near the BOX interface is a promising source for large valley splitting.