Properties of Aluminium Gallium Arsenide

This text attempts to summarize, in graphical and tabular forms, the theoretical and experimental data on bulk AlGaAs material parameters and properties. The book also provides an overview of the physical properties of AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunctions and superlattices.

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The alloy system A1GaAs/GaAs is potentially of great importance for many high-speed electronics and optoelectronic devices, because the lattice parameter difference GaAs and A1GaAs is very small, which promises an insignificant concentration of undesirable interface states. Thanks to this prominent feature, a number of interesting properties and phenomena, such as high-mobility low-dimensional carrier gases, resonant tunnelling and fractional quantum Hall effect, have been found in the A1GaAs/GaAs heterostructure system. New devices, such as modulation-doped FETs, heterojunction bipolar transistors, resonant tunnelling transistors, quantum-well lasers, and other photonic and quantum-effect devices, have also been developed recently using this material system. These areas are recognized as not being the most interesting and active fields in semiconductor physics and device engineering. This is the first EMIS book using figures. The book attempts to summarize, in graphical and tabular forms, most of the important theoretical and experimental data on bulk A1GaAs (GaAs, A1GaAs and A1As) material parameters and properties.
They can be classified into 9 groups: structural properties; mechanical, elastic and lattice vibrational properties; thermal properties; energy-band structure consequences; optical properties; electro-optic properties; carrier transport properties; surface, interface and contacts; and impurity and defect centres. The book also contains an overview of the physical properties of A1GaAs/GaAs heterojunctions and superlattices.