High-pressure behavior of the bond-bending mode of AIN

Lattice vibrations of the wurtzite-type AIN have been studied by Raman spectroscopy under high-pressure up to the phase transition to the rock salt structure at 20 GPa. Five fundamental bands E ₂ ² , A₁(TO), E₁(TO), A₁(LO), and E₁(LO) have a strong, positive pressure shift, whereas the shift of the low-frequency E ₂ ¹ band is weakly positive. We have found that the bond-bending mode has a positive mode Grüneisen parameter γ_i = 0.04, which is qualitatively consistent with the recently reported value γ_i = 0.12 21]. Thus, we confirm that AIN remains stable with respect to the bond-bending mode, while in most tetrahedral semiconductors, bond-bending modes soften on compression. Experimental results are compared with the first-principle calculations.