A^III−B^V antimonides

Abstract

Semiconductor A^III−B^V ternary and quaternary antimonides are useful materials for optoelectronic and microelectronic applications. Only a few members of possible combinations were prepared, mostly as epitaxial layers grown onto a binary or ternary A^III−B^V compound. The energy band gap and lattice constants can be obtained even for the unknown compositions by applying interpolation methods. In some A^III−B^V antimonide systems the presence of a miscibility gap makes the situation very difficult. The phase diagram is unknown in details for many antimonide compounds and these facts throw difficulties in the way of liquid phase epitaxy. Due to limitations imposed by phase relations the growth of device quality layer structures is rather complicated and only the GaAsSb and GaAlAsSb structures have practical applications as light sources and detectors. Both ternary and quaternary systems have a peritectic type phase diagram. The peritectic temperatures (T _p ) were found to be 745°C for GaAsSb and 715°C for GaAlAsSb.