Static and Dynamical Valence-Charge-Density Properties of GaAs

Abstract

Abstract Owing to the close neighbourhood of Ga and As in Mendeleev's table, GaAs shows two fundamental classes of X-ray structure amplitudes distinguished by their extremely different scattering power. They are differently sensitive to the valence electron density (VED) redistribution caused by the chemical bond and must be measured by different experimental methods. Using such data, both the VED and the difference electron densities (DED) are calculated here. Comparison with theoret-ical densities shows that the VED is characterized by covalent, ionic and metallic contributions. The DED constructed from GaAs and Ge data demonstrates the electronic response caused by a "protonic" charge transfer between both f.c.c. sublattices as well as the transition from a purely covalent to a mixed covalent-ionic bond. Especially the charge-density accumulation between nearest neighbours (bond charge (BC)) depends on the distance between the bonding atoms and changes under the influence of any lattice deformation. This phenomenon is described by a BC-transfer model. Its direct experimental proof is given by measuring the variation of the scattering power of weak reflections under the influence of an external electric field. This experiment demonstrates that the ionicity of the bond changes in addition to the BC variation.