Gallium phosphide (GaP), band structure

Abstract

substance: gallium phosphide (GaP) property: band structure band structure: Fig. 1, Brillouin zone: Fig. 2, density of states of conduction and valence bands: Fig. 3. GaP is an indirect gap semiconductor. The lowest set of conduction bands shows a camel's back structure (Fig. 4): the band minima are situated at the ∆-axes near the zone boundary. A higher band minimum at Γ is responsible for direct transitions in optical absorption. The valence bands show the usual structure characteristic for all zincblende semiconductors. The band structure shown in Fig. 1 has been calculated without inclusion of spin-orbit splitting; therefore the symmetry symbols of the high symmetry band states are symbols of the single group of the zincblende structure.