Gallium semiconductor

Pankove J I and Moustaka T D 1997 Gallium Nitride (Semiconductors and Semimetals 50) (Boston Academic)... 

Intermetallic compounds with gallium are used as semiconductors. Indium is used to coat other metals to protect against corrosion, especially in engine bearings it is also a constituent of low-metal alloys used in safety sprinklers. The toxicity of thallium compounds has limited the use of the metal, but it does find use as a constituent of high-endurance alloys for bearings. 

Gallium wets glass or porcelain and forms a brilliant mirror when it is painted on glass. It is widely used in doping semiconductors and producing solid-state devices such as transistors. 

The first semiconductor lasers, fabricated from gallium arsenide material, were formed from a simple junction (called a homojunction because the composition of the material was the same on each side of the junction) between the type and n-ty e materials. Those devices required high electrical current density, which produced damage ia the region of the junction so that the lasers were short-Hved. To reduce this problem, a heterojunction stmcture was developed. This junction is formed by growing a number of layers of different composition epitaxially. This is shown ia Figure 12. There are a number of layers of material having different composition is this ternary alloy system, which may be denoted Al Ga his notation, x is a composition... 

Fig. 12. Details of an aluminum gallium arsenide semiconductor diode laser.

A mixture of (C H ) , TiCl, and AlCl is useful for polymerizing C —olefins (85). The dimerization of propylene is accompHshed by using catalysts such as Ni(PR2)4 (86). Alkylphosphines such as / fZ-butylphosphine [2501-94-2] have been proposed as a substitute for high purity phosphine in the production of the semiconductor gallium phosphide (87). 

Metallic Antimonides. Numerous binary compounds of antimony with metallic elements are known. The most important of these are indium antimonide [1312-41 -0] InSb, gallium antimonide [12064-03-8] GaSb, and aluminum antimonide [25152-52-7] AlSb, which find extensive use as semiconductors. The alkali metal antimonides, such as lithium antimonide [12057-30-6] and sodium antimonide [12058-86-5] do not consist of simple ions. Rather, there is appreciable covalent bonding between the alkali metal and the Sb as well as between pairs of Na atoms. These compounds are useful for the preparation of organoantimony compounds, such as trimethylstibine [594-10-5] (CH2)2Sb, by reaction with an organohalogen compound. 

The preparation of semiconductors by thermal decomposition would appear to be impossible because of the high amount of energy required to break all of the metal-carbon bonds before the atomic species could be formed. However, the thermal method is successful because the reaction to form free methyl radicals, which combine to form ethane, lowers the energetic requirements for the formahon of gallium, for example, according to the equation... 

Gallium arsenide is a semiconducting material. If we wish to modify the sample by replacing a small amount of the arsenic with an element to produce an n-type semiconductor, which element would we choose selenium, phosphorus, or silicon Why ... 

Arsenic and antimony are metalloids. They have been known in the pure state since ancient times because they are easily obtained from their ores (Fig. 15.3). In the elemental state, they are used primarily in the semiconductor industry and in the lead alloys used as electrodes in storage batteries. Gallium arsenide is used in lasers, including the lasers used in CD players. Metallic bismuth, with its large, weakly bonded atoms, has a low melting point and is used in alloys that serve as fire detectors in sprinkler systems the alloy melts when a fire breaks out nearby, and the sprinkler system is activated. Like ice, solid bismuth is less dense than the liquid. As a result, molten bismuth does not shrink when it solidifies in molds, and so it is used to make low-temperature castings. 

A schematic of epitaxial growth is shown in Fig. 2.11. As an example, it is possible to grow gallium arsenide epitaxially on silicon since the lattice parameters of the two materials are similar. On the other hand, deposition of indium phosphide on silicon is not possible since the lattice mismatch is 8%, which is too high. A solution is to use an intermediate buffer layer of gallium arsenide between the silicon and the indium phosphide. The lattice parameters of common semiconductor materials are shown in Fig. 2.12. 

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