Zinc selenide


Zinc selenide is a light-yellow, solid compound comprising zinc and selenium. It is an intrinsic semiconductor with a band gap of about 2.70 eV at. ZnSe rarely occurs in nature, and is found in the mineral that was named after Hans Stille called "stilleite."

Properties

ZnSe can be made in both hexagonal and cubic crystal structure.
It is a wide-bandgap semiconductor of the II-VI semiconductor group. The material can be doped n-type doping with, for instance, halogen elements. P-type doping is more difficult, but can be achieved by introducing gallium.

Applications

ZnSe is insoluble in water, but reacts with acids to form toxic hydrogen selenide gas.
It can be deposited as a thin film by chemical vapour deposition techniques including MOVPE and vacuum evaporation.