Advances in the theory of electronic structure of semiconductors

This paper reviews the present status of recently developed ab-initio as well as semiempirical electronic structure methods that are particularly suited for semiconductors and mesoscopic semiconductor structures. In assessing each method, we provide some additional and hitherto unpublished details about its implementation. In the first part of the paper, we discuss two important extensions of the local density functional theory, the screened-exchange and the exact exchange method namely. We proceed with a discussion of the relativistic local density method that is essential for a prediction of spin-related phenomena in semiconductors. Finally, we review a rather complete and extensve implementation of the envelope function approach for arbitrary three-dimensional nanometer device structures.