IIIVxN1-x ternary alloys are promising materials for their applications in light-emitting devices in the range of wavelength from ultra violet to the infrared ray due to the large bowing of band gap energy. In this paper, molecular dynamical method was used to calculate the solubility of phosphorus in GaN by using the Gibbs free energy and the dielectric theory. The calculation results show that the content of P in GaN varies with the growth temperature, which may be larger than 25% in the N-rich GaPxN1-x or less than 90% in the P-rich GaPxN1-x, at the growth temperature of about 1500 K. We compared our theoretical results with those reported in references. By using light-radiation heating together with low-pressure metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, and ion implantation techniques, we have successfully synthesized N-rich (x < 0. 17) and P-rich GaPxN1-x (x > 0.90) compounds. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.