Drawing No. EH–MT–012 // Engineering Materials
Gallium Arsenide Properties
Reviewed August 2026
Gallium arsenide is a III-V semiconductor used in high-frequency, optoelectronic and high-efficiency photovoltaic applications. Its elastic and thermal properties are anisotropic/crystal-specific.
Representative properties
The stated basis, temperature and direction are part of the value. Switch units without changing the physical reference.
What changes these properties?
Engineering variability
- Thermal conductivity depends on purity, defects, doping and temperature.
- Single-crystal elastic constants vary with orientation.
- Wafer fracture is controlled by surface damage, edges and processing defects.
- At high temperature arsenic volatility and compound phase equilibrium matter in addition to nominal melting behavior.
Selection note
Used for RF electronics, lasers/LEDs, solar cells and optoelectronics where high electron mobility/direct bandgap outweigh brittleness and material cost.
Where a property is shown as qualitative rather than numeric, that is intentional: the selected source or the material physics does not justify a single comparable scalar.
How to interpret this material
Stiffness
Young’s modulus describes elastic stiffness. For crystals and composites, orientation can make one scalar modulus only a directional reference.
Strength / failure
Ductile metals can use yield and tensile strength. Brittle ceramics/semiconductors and anisotropic composites require fracture, flexural or directional strength descriptions instead.
Thermal response
Conductivity, heat capacity and expansion are temperature dependent. The last column is a melting or transition descriptor only where that physical concept is appropriate.
Technical sources
The database favors manufacturer, industry, government or academic technical references and labels secondary condition-specific datasets when a primary source does not expose a complete property set.