Gallium antimonide (GaSb) is a semiconducting compound of gallium and antimony of the III-V family. It has a room temperature lattice constant of about 0.610 nm. It has a room temperature direct bandgap of approximately 0.73 eV.

History

The intermetallic compound GaSb was first prepared in 1926 by Victor Goldschmidt, who directly combined the elements under an inert gas atmosphere and reported on GaSb's lattice constant, which has since been revised. Goldschmidt also synthesized gallium phosphide and gallium arsenide. The Ga-Sb phase equilibria was investigated in 1955 by Koster and by Greenfield.

Applications

GaSb can be used for Infrared detectors, infrared LEDs and lasers and transistors, and thermophotovoltaic systems.