Eur. Phys. J. B 70, 523-534 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00250-0

High pressure structural phase transition and elastic properties of Ga_1-xIn_xAs semiconducting compounds

School of Physics, Vigyan Bhawan, Devi Ahilya University, Khandwa Road Campus, Indore, 452001, India

Corresponding author: ^a vdinesh33@rediffmail.com

Received: 12 February 2009
Revised: 5 June 2009
Published online: 21 July 2009

Abstract

The present paper addresses the high-pressure phase transformation and mechanical properties of Ga_1-xIn_xAs (x = 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75) by formulating an effective interionic interaction potential. This potential consists of the long-range Coulomb and charge transfer caused by the deformation of the electron shells of the overlapping ions and the Hafemeister and Flygare type short-range overlap repulsion extended upto the second neighbor ions and the van der Waals (vdW) interaction. The estimated values of phase transition pressure and the vast volume discontinuity in pressure-volume (PV) phase diagram indicate the structural phase transition from zinc blende (B3) to rock salt (B1). The equation of state curves plotted between V (P)/ V (0) and pressure are for both the zincblende (B3) and rocksalt (B1) structures. Further, the variations of the second and third order elastic constants with pressure have followed a systematic trend, which are almost identical to those exhibited by the observed data measured for other compounds of this family.