Gallium Antimonide 

Gallium Antimonide (GaSb) is a compound semiconductor whose proporties make it well suited for Infrared detectors and related devices. It can be etched using Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP), Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) or Ion Beam Etch (IBE).

• As a substrate for high power devices it is robust, lightweight and able to transfer heat from the active region better than any other material whilst tolerating high applied voltages.
• It is a suitable replacement for silicon in MEMS devices where wear and bio-compatibility are a concern and can be combined with piezo-electric materials like AlN to form high frequency SAW devices. Its optical absorption is low across the visible spectrum, which combined with a high refractive index allows it to be used for applications like waveguiding.
• The leading candidate for quantum information processing, where NV centres can be interrogated to give information about the quantum states.