Aluminium gallium indium phosphide
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| AlGaInP | |
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| Cubic | |
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Except where otherwise noted, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C [77 °F], 100 kPa).
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Aluminium gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP, also AlInGaP, InGaAlP, etc.) is a semiconductor material that provides a platform for the development of novel multi-junction photovoltaics and optoelectronic devices, as it spans a direct bandgap from deep ultraviolet to infrared.
AlGaInP is used in manufacture of light-emitting diodes of high-brightness red, orange, green, and yellow color, to form the heterostructure emitting light. It is also used to make diode lasers.
AlGaInP layer is often grown by heteroepitaxy on gallium arsenide or gallium phosphide in order to form a quantum well structure.
Heteroepitaxy is a kind of epitaxy performed with materials that are different from each other. In heteroepitaxy, a crystalline film grows on a crystalline substrate or film of a different material.
This technology is often used to grow crystalline films of materials for which single crystals cannot 1D View
Another example of heteroepitaxy is gallium nitride (GaN) on sapphire
AlGaInP is a semiconductor, which means that its valence band is completely full. The eV of the band gap between the valence band and the conduction band is small enough that it is able to emit visible light (1.7eV - 3.1eV). The band gap of AlGaInP is between 1.81eV and 2eV. This corresponds to Red, orange, or yellow light, and that is why the LEDs made from AlGaInP are those colors.
AlGaInP's structure is categorized within a specific unit cell called the Zinc blende Structure. Zinc blende/sphalerite is based on a FCC lattice of anions. It has 4 asymmetric units in its unit cell. It is best thought of as a face-centered cubic array of anions and cations occupying one half of the tetrahedral holes. Each ion is 4-coordinate and has local tetrahedral geometry. Zinc blende is its own antitype—you can switch the anion and cation positions in the cell and it doesn't matter (as in NaCl). In fact, replacement of both the Zn and S with C gives the diamond structure!
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