Band-Gap Design of Quaternary (In,Ga)(As,Sb) Semiconductors via the Inverse-Band-Structure Approach

Abstract
Quaternary systems illustrated by (Ga,In)(As,Sb) manifest a huge configurational space, offering in principle the possibility of designing structures that are lattice matched to a given substrate and have given electronic properties (e.g., band gap) at more than one composition. Such specific configurations were however, hitherto, unidentified. We show here that using a genetic-algorithm search with a pseudopotential “Inverse-band-structure (IBS) approach it is possible to identify those configurations that are naturally lattice matching (to GaSb) and have a specific band gap (310 meV) at more than one composition. This is done by deviating from randomness, allowing the IBS to find a partial atomic ordering. This illustrates multitarget design of the electronic structure of multinary systems.