Elastic properties of zincblende III-nitrides: A first-principles study

We have performed first-principle calculations to calculate elastic stiffness constants (C
₁₁
, C
₁₂
, C
₄₄
) and bulk modulus (B) of AlN, GaN and InN semiconductors in the zinc blende structure. These properties are calculated using an ab initio pseudo potential method based on density functional theory (DFT) with the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) for the exchange-correlation functional. The Calculated values are in fair agreement with the values reported by earlier workers.