Authors: B Keen R Makin P A Stampe R J Kennedy S Sallis L J Piper B McCombe S M Durbin
Publish Date: 2014/01/28
Volume: 43, Issue: 4, Pages: 914-920
Abstract
The alloying of bismuth with III–V semiconductors in particular GaAs and InAs thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy MBE has attracted considerable interest due to the accompanying changes in band structure and lattice constant Specifically bismuth incorporation in these compounds results in both a reduction in band gap through shifting of the valence band and an increase in the lattice constant of the alloy To fully understand the composition of these alloys a better understanding of the binary endpoints is needed At present a limited amount of literature exists on the IIIBi family of materials most of which is theoretical work based on density functional theory calculations The only IIIBi material known to exist in bulk crystal form is InBi but its electrical properties have not been sufficiently studied and to date the material has not been fabricated as a thin film We have successfully deposited crystalline InBi on 100 GaAs substrates using MBE Wetting of the substrate is poor and regions of varying composition exist across the substrate To obtain InBi the growth temperature had to be below 100 °C It was found that film crystallinity improved with reduced Bi flux into an Inrich regime Additionally attempts were made to grow AlBi and GaBi
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