Indium antimonide (InSb) and Gallium antimonide (GaSb)
InSb crystals have been grown by slow cooling from liquid melt at least since 1954 Physical propertiesIndium antimonide.InSb has the appearance of dark-grey silvery metal pieces or powder with vitreous lustre. When subjected to temperatures over 500 °C, it melts and decomposes, liberating antimony and antimonide oxide vapors.InSb is a narrow-gap semiconductor with an energy band gapof 0.17ev at 300 Kand 0.23 eV at 80 K. The crystal structure is zincblend with a 0.648 nm lattice constant.Uploded InSb possesses the largest ambient-temperature electron mobility(78000 cm2/(V*s), electron drift velocity and ballastic length (up to 0.7 ÎÜm at 300 K) of any known semiconductor, except possibly for CNT"s.A layer of indium antimonide sandwiched between layers of alluminium antimonide can act as a quantum well. InSb can be grown by solidifying a melt from the liquid state, or epitaxy by liquid phase epitaxy, It can also be grown from organometalliccompounds by MOVPELead telluride was used as a "captive" source of tellurium (Te) for the n-type doping of gallium antimonide (GaSb) and aluminum antimonide (AlSb)grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Controllable carrier concentrations from 1.2 x 1016 to 1.6 x 1018 cm-3 were obtained. High room-temperature Hall mobilities of 4200 cm2/V · s were measured for the low-doped GaSb samples. In the growth temperature range of interest, doping ef-ficiencies are approximately 50% of those in GaAs. For GaSb, SIMS data show that the Te incorporation decreases significantly at growth temperatures above 500° C
Device applications
Thermal Imagr detectors using Photo Diodes (detectors) sensors using the Hall Effect Fast transistors (in terms of dynamic switching). This is due to the high carrier mobility of InSb.