We have measured the minority carrier lifetime &tgr;minin liquid phase epitaxial GaP material grown for high‐temperature device applications, as a function of doping concentration, temperature, and epitaxial layer thickness. Inp‐type GaP doped with Mg, &tgr;minremains constant with increasing carrier concentration untilp≊1018cm−3, where it decreases rapidly. For nominally undopedn‐type material we find that &tgr;minincreases by nearly one order of magnitude over the temperature rangeT= 22–600 °C. The apparent lifetimes in these thin‐layer materials increase with layer thickness indicating that surface and interface recombination are important.