Growth of dilute III V N and III V Bi semiconductors by liquid phase epitaxy

Dilute III-V- Nitride and III-V- Bismide materials have found great interest as promising materials for the fabrication f sources and detectectrs  in the near infrared region. These materials are obtained by adding very little amounts of N or Bi to the base III-V crystal and this causes a large increase in the energy band gap of the material. This provides an easy way for the tuning of the band gap of the material by controlling the N or Bi to the semiconductor.  These materials are grown by MBE and MOCVD techniques. We have grown them using a far simpler and hazard free liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) technique. GaAsN grown by this technique  indicated a maximum N content in  the solid as 0.5 wt% which upon addition of Li₃N to the growth melt increased to 0.9%. The technique also successfully yielded GaSbN, InPN and InAsN epitaxial layers. By adding controlled amounts of Bi to a GaSb growth melt we have been able to produce GaSbN layers. Various interesting properties of this material have been obtained. We have also grown InPBi, InSbBi and InPNBi epitaxial layers by LPE technique. The properties f these materials will be discussed in details.