Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 16, 2026

Developing High Performance GaP/Si Heterojunction Solar Cells
Published on: November 16, 2018
Pinpointing the Band Gap Energy of GaAs by Fitting the Transmissive Part of the Absorption Spectrum with Bootstrap
Mithun Bhowmick1, Shuchismita Sarkar2, Bruno Ullrich3
1Department of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Miami University, Middletown, OH 45042, USA.
Abstract:
Optical absorption in semiconductors is one of the most basic yet complex properties in crystalline semiconductors. There have been decades of studies on optical absorption with specific efforts towards understanding the accuracy of measurements. However, the interdependence of the parameters employed in the fit routines poses challenges in calculating consistent and reliable errors associated with the process when the band tailing states are involved, which is unavoidable in all practical measurements. This work examines room-temperature absorption measurements in undoped GaAs to report consistent error bars employing a bootstrap resampling analysis. The results show that (1) the transmissive part of the measured absorption contains all the information about the fit parameters for the entire spectrum and (2) it is possible to utilize statistical bootstrap sampling to determine error bars when interdependent fit parameters are present in the fit model.
Related Concept Videos
Energy Bands in Solids
Band Formation:
When atoms are brought close together, as in a solid, these discrete energy levels begin to split due to the overlap of electron orbitals from adjacent atoms. This split occurs because of the Pauli exclusion principle, which states...
Semiconductors
Metals such as copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), or lead (Pb) have low resistivity and feature conduction bands that are either not fully occupied or overlap with the valence band, making a bandgap non-existent. This allows electrons in the highest energy levels of the valence band to easily transition to the conduction band upon gaining...
Band Theory
The energy difference between these bands is known as the band gap.
Conductor, Semiconductor,...
UV–Vis Spectroscopy: Molecular Electronic Transitions
UV–Vis Spectroscopy: Beer–Lambert Law
UV–Vis Spectrum
The UV–Vis spectrum of a molecule is the plot of its absorbance versus wavelength. The plot is drawn by taking molar...

