AlGaN Nitride Epitaxial Growth & Bandgap Lab (2D)

A 2D top-down cutaway companion to the 3D AlGaN epitaxy lab. III-nitride semiconductors — GaN, AlN, and their AlGaN alloys — are the materials behind every blue and white LED and most deep-UV disinfection lamps in use today. This simulator grows the same wurtzite Al_xGa_1-xN nanocrystal atom by atom on a hexagonal substrate, the same layer-by-layer mechanism used inside a real MOCVD reactor, rendered here as a tilted plan view where each new monolayer rises visibly above the last. Three real controls — alloy composition, substrate temperature, and precursor V/III ratio — reshape the crystal and its physics live: raising the Al fraction slides the bandgap from GaN's 3.42 eV up toward AlN's 6.20 eV via Vegard's law, shifting the simulated LED emission wavelength from blue-violet into the deep ultraviolet; temperature controls whether adatoms diffuse far enough for an orderly raster-filled step-flow layer or scatter into a stippled, randomly-nucleated island pattern; and the V/III ratio sets a precursor-limited growth rate that saturates just as it does on the factory floor. Drag to pan across the lattice and scroll to zoom in on individual atoms.