Talk:Gallium phosphide

OK,sorry, it's indirect. I looked at the reference: http://www.ioffe.rssi.ru/SVA/NSM/Semicond/GaP/Figs/521.gif So hard for me to believe, with GaAs, GaN, and GaSb being direct. But true. And not as drastically indirect as silicon, so can have sharper absorption edge than Si. jimswen 10:23, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure GaP has a direct bandgap, not indirect. It's like GaAs. That's why it's used for LED's. And it has a sharp-cutoff "blue-blocker" clear orange color in polished optical-grade single-crystals. jimswen 10:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

GaP has lattice constant of 0.54505nm which is close to silicon 0.5431nm. Thus GaP:N might lead to improved Si-based multi-junction solar cells.

I removed the phrase: "It is an intrinsic semiconductor of n-type." This makes no sense. Intrinsic semiconductors are by definition neither p- nor n- type. Probably the author meant that unintentionally doped GaP grows with extrinsic n-doping from impurities, but that's certainly not what they said. Cm the p 18:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

higher: index or dispersion?[edit]

I find the 2nd clause of this sentence iffy: "Its refractive index varies between ~3.2 and 5.0 across the visible range, which is higher than in most other semiconducting materials.[3]".

 Is {3.2-5} a higher index than most other semiconductors? Not so sure.
 Or is it the change in index, aka 'dispersion', that is higher. All semiconductors have index increasing as photon energy increases to approach the bandgap energy. Thus, high dispersion would be due to mere coincidence that GaP's bandgap falls in the human-visible range. jimswen (talk) 22:04, 26 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]