Lattice constants semiconductors

Another example of epitaxy is tin growdi on the (100) surfaces of InSb or CdTe a = 6.49 A) [14]. At room temperature, elemental tin is metallic and adopts a bet crystal structure ( white tin ) with a lattice constant of 5.83 A. However, upon deposition on either of the two above-mentioned surfaces, tin is transfonned into the diamond structure ( grey tin ) with a = 6.49 A and essentially no misfit at the interface. Furtliennore, since grey tin is a semiconductor, then a novel heterojunction material can be fabricated. It is evident that epitaxial growth can be exploited to synthesize materials with novel physical and chemical properties. 

III-V compound semiconductors with precisely controlled compositions and gaps can be prepared from several material systems. Representative III-V compounds are shown in tire gap-lattice constant plots of figure C2.16.3. The points representing binary semiconductors such as GaAs or InP are joined by lines indicating ternary and quaternary alloys. The special nature of tire binary compounds arises from tlieir availability as tire substrate material needed for epitaxial growtli of device stmctures. 

Figure C2.16.3. A plot of tire energy gap and lattice constant for tire most common III-V compound semiconductors. All tire materials shown have cubic (zincblende) stmcture. Elemental semiconductors. Si and Ge, are included for comparison. The lines connecting binary semiconductors indicate possible ternary compounds witli direct gaps. Dashed lines near GaP represent indirect gap regions. The line from InP to a point marked represents tire quaternary compound InGaAsP, lattice matched to InP.

Temary and quaternary semiconductors are theoretically described by the virtual crystal approximation (VGA) [7], Within the VGA, ternary alloys with the composition AB are considered to contain two sublattices. One of them is occupied only by atoms A, the other is occupied by atoms B or G. The second sublattice consists of virtual atoms, represented by a weighted average of atoms B and G. Many physical properties of ternary alloys are then expressed as weighted linear combinations of the corresponding properties of the two binary compounds. For example, the lattice constant d dependence on composition is written as ... 

Epitaxial crystal growth methods such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) have advanced to the point that active regions of essentially arbitrary thicknesses can be prepared (see Thin films, film deposition techniques). Most semiconductors used for lasers are cubic crystals where the lattice constant, the dimension of the cube, is equal to two atomic plane distances. When the thickness of this layer is reduced to dimensions on the order of 0.01 )J.m, between 20 and 30 atomic plane distances, quantum mechanics is needed for an accurate description of the confined carrier energies (11). Such layers are called quantum wells and the lasers containing such layers in their active regions are known as quantum well lasers (12). 

Fig. 6. Band gap versus lattice constant for Group 13—15 (III—V) semiconductors where (—) denotes direct gap and (-) iadirect. Liaes joining the...

Fig. 8. A plot of band gap versus lattice constant for Groups 2—16 and 12—16 (II—VI) semiconductors used for the preparation of green and blue lasers.

Table 1 Hsts the properties of several semiconductors relevant to device design and epitaxy. The properties are appropriate to the 2incblende crystal stmcture in those cases where hexagonal polytypes exist, ie, ZnS and ZnSe. This first group of crystal parameters appHes to the growth of epitaxial heterostmctures the cubic lattice constant, a the elastic constants, congment sublimation temperature, T. Eor growth of defect-free...

In addition to these direct long-range forces there may also exist effective long-range forces, produced by some medium or substrate. An especially drastic effect is expected for epitaxial growth on a semiconductor. If adsorbate atoms are different from the substrate, the adsorbed layers have a lattice constant different from that of the substrate. In the case of thick adsorbate layers, an instability then appears on the surface of the crystal such that the surface undergoes wavy deformation, which might even lead to... 

Figure 2.12. Bandgap and lattice constant of semiconductor materials.

These materials are useful semiconductors and have a wide range of industrial applications, particularly in opto-electronics. One of their attractive features is the possibility of tailoring the band gap and the lattice constant in the ternary alloys by varying the composition. CVD is now a major production process of these materials. 

Fig. 1 Left Schematic energy levels in a semiconductor. Right Bandgap energy vs lattice constant for some technologically important semiconductors...

The muonium centers observed in the curpous halides (see Table II) are unusual in several respects compared with Mu in other semiconductors and insulators. Figure 12 shows the reduced hyperfine parameters for Mu in semiconductors and ionic insulators plotted as a function of the ionicity (Philips, 1970). The positive correlation is especially apparent for compounds composed of elements on the same row of the periodic table where the lattice constants and valence orbitals are similar (see solid points in Fig. 12). Note however that the Mu hyperfine parameters in cuprous halides lie well below the line and in fact are smaller than in any other semiconductor or insulator (Kiefl et al., 1986b). The reason for this unusual behaviour is still uncertain but may be related to other unusual properties of the cuprous halides. For example the upper valence band is believed... 

On the practical side, we note that nature provides a number of extended systems like solid metals [29, 30], metal clusters [31], and semiconductors [30, 32]. These systems have much in common with the uniform electron gas, and their ground-state properties (lattice constants [29, 30, 32], bulk moduli [29, 30, 32], cohesive energies [29], surface energies [30, 31], etc.) are typically described much better by functionals (including even LSD) which have the right uniform density limit than by those that do not. There is no sharp boundary between quantum chemistry and condensed matter physics. A good density functional should describe all the continuous gradations between localized and delocalized electron densities, and all the combinations of both (such as a molecule bound to a metal surface a situation important for catalysis). 

Electron microscopy has been performed using a sample synthesised at w = 10, [Cd2+]/[S2 ] = 2, and characterized by 430-nm absorption onset, which corresponds to a CdS diameter equal to 25 A. The microanalysis study shows the characteristic lines of sulfide and cadmium ions, indicating that the observed particles are CdS semiconductor crystallites. The electron diffractogram shows concentric circles, which are compared to a simulated diffractogram of bulk CdS. A good agreement between the two spectra is obtained, indicating the particles keep zinc-blend crystalline structure (fee) with a lattice constant equal to 5.83 A. 

The parameter is obtained by relating the static dielectric constant to Eg and taking in such crystals to be proportional to a - where a is the lattice constant. Phillips parameters for a few crystals are listed in Table 1.4. Phillips has shown that all crystals with a/ below the critical value of0.785 possess the tetrahedral diamond (or wurtzite) structure when f > 0.785, six-fold coordination (rocksalt structure) is favoured. Pauling s ionicity scale also makes such structural predictions, but Phillips scale is more universal. Accordingly, MgS (f = 0.786) shows a borderline behaviour. Cohesive energies of tetrahedrally coordinated semiconductors have been calculated making use... 

The interaction parameter, ft, is a fitting parameter in the regular solution model that can be found from liquid-solid equilibrium data (93). With the DLP model, the interaction parameter is calculated from the lattice parameters of the binary compounds. For a compound semiconductor AiJB C, ft is computed from the lattice constants aAC and aBC of the binary compounds from the following expression... 

As early as 1943, Sommer (101) reported the existence of a stoichiometric compound CsAu, exhibiting nonmetallic properties. Later reports (53, 102, 103,123) confirmed its existence and described the crystal structure, as well as the electrical and optical properties of this compound. The lattice constant of its CsCl-type structure is reported (103) to be 4.263 0.001 A. Band structure calculations are consistent with observed experimental results that the material is a semiconductor with a band gap of 2.6 eV (102). The phase diagram of the Cs-Au system shows the existence of a discrete CsAu phase (32) of melting point 590°C and a very narrow range of homogeneity (42). 

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