Measurements of Shubnikov de Haas oscillations in the temperature range 0.3–2 K have been used to determine an effective mass of 0.23 m0 in a Si/Si0.87Ge0.13/Si two-dimensional hole gas. This value is in agreement with theoretical predictions and with that obtained from cyclotron resonance measurements. The ratio of the transport time to the quantum lifetime is found to be 0.8. It is concluded that the 4 K hole mobility of 11 000 cm2 V−1 s−1 at a carrier sheet density of 2.2×1011 cm−2 is limited by interface roughness and short-range interface charge scattering.

The effective masses in remote doped Si/Si1−xGex hole quantum wells with 0.05≤x≤0.3, have been determined from the temperature dependence of the Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations. The values are lower than previously observed by other workers, but still somewhat higher than the theoretical Γ-point values for the ground-state heavy hole subband. The differences are attributed to finite carrier sheet densities and can be satisfactorily accounted for by nonparabolicity corrections.

The effective masses in remote doped Si/Si 0.8 Ge 0.2 /Si quantum wells having sheet densities, N s in the range 2ϫ10 11 -1.1ϫ10 12 cm Ϫ2 have been determined from the temperature dependencies of the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations. The values obtained increase with magnetic field and N s . This behavior is taken as evidence for the nonparabolicity of the valence band and accounts for the discrepancies in previously reported masses. Self-consistent band structure calculations for a triangular confinement of the carriers have also been carried out and provide confirmation of the increase in mass with N s . Theory and experiment give extrapolated ⌫ point effective masses of 0.21 and 0.20 of the free-electron mass, respectively.