This paper reviews the basic properties of the SiGe alloy, presents some new results on its electronic and optical properties, and discusses the approach that has been followed to model quantum wells containing SiGe layers for applications in quantum cascade lasers. The shape of the confining potential, the subband energies and their eigen envelope wave functions are calculated by solving a one-dimensional Schr?dinger equation. The calculations of optical parameters are used to optimize the Si/SiGe quantum cascade structures. Our results are found to be in good agreement with other calculations.