Growth and characterization of GaInNP grown on GaAs substrates

Recently, Ga/sub 0.52/In/sub 0.48/P grown lattice-matched to GaAs has received considerable attention due to its device applications, such as high-efficiency tandem solar cells and heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). Nitrogen incorporation drastically reduces the band gap energy in Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/As, mainly due to lowering of the conduction band edge. Recently we have shown that, by analyzing Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/N/sub y/P/sub 1-y//GaAs quantum-well photoluminescence (PL), nitrogen incorporation in Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/P lowers the conduction band edge as in the case for Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/N/sub y/As/sub 1-y/. In this paper we investigated bulk properties of Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/N/sub y/P/sub 1-y/ by incorporating a small amount of nitrogen into Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/N/sub y/P/sub 1-y/ resulting in tunable band gap energies smaller than the Ga/sub 0.52/In/sub 0.48/P bandgap, while maintaining lattice match to GaAs when (x-0.48) /spl sim/ 2.8y. Because of the nearly zero conduction band offset, GaInNP could be an ideal material for GaAs-based npn HBTs.