GALLIU

M
Gallium is a soft, silvery-white metal, similar to aluminum. Gallium arsenide has a similar structure
to silicon and is a useful silicon substitute for the electronics industry. It is an important component
of many semiconductors. It is also used in red LEDs (light emitting diodes) because of its ability to
convert electricity to light. Solar panels on the Mars Exploration Rover contained gallium arsenide.

Gallium nitride is also a semiconductor. It has particular properties that make it very versatile. It has
important uses in Blu-ray technology, mobile phones, blue and green LEDs and pressure sensors for
touch switches.

Gallium readily alloys with most metals. It is particularly used in low-melting alloys.

It has a high boiling point, which makes it ideal for recording temperatures that would vaporise a
thermometer

CHARACTERISTIC
S
 Gallium arsenide has a similar structure to silicon and is a useful silicon substitute for the electronics industry.
It is an important component of many semiconductors. It is also used in red LEDs (light emitting diodes)
because of its ability to convert electricity to light. Solar panels on the Mars Exploration Rover contained
gallium arsenide.

Gallium nitride is also a semiconductor. It has particular properties that make it very versatile. It has important
uses in Blu-ray technology, mobile phones, blue and green LEDs and pressure sensors for touch switches.

Gallium readily alloys with most metals. It is particularly used in low-melting alloys.

It has a high boiling point, which makes it ideal for recording temperatures that would vaporise a
thermometer.

CHARACTERISTICS
 Gallium is silvery white and
soft enough to be cute with a
knife.
 It takes on a bluish tinge
because of superficial
oxidation.
HISTORY  Gallium remains in the
liquid phase over a
temperature range of about
2,000 °C (about 3,600 °F),
Gallium was discovered in Paris by Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875. with a very low vapor
He observed a new violet line in the atomic spectrum of some zinc he had
extracted from a sample of zinc blende ore (ZnS) from the Pyrenees. He knew
pressure up to about 1,500 °C
it meant that an unknown element was present. (about 2,700 °F), the longest
What Boisbaudran didn’t realise was that its existence, and properties, had been
useful liquid range of any
predicted by Mendeleev whose periodic table showed there was a gap below element.
aluminium which was yet to be occupied. He forecast that the missing
element’s atomic weight would be around 68 and its density would be 5.9  In most of its compounds,
g/cm3. gallium has an oxidation
By November of 1875, Boisbaudran had isolated and purified the new metal state of +3 and, in a few, +1
and shown that it was like aluminium. In December 1875 he announced it to (for example, the oxide,
the French Academy of Sciences.
Ga2O).