Admittance studies of modification of HgCdTe surface properties with ion implantation and thermal annealing

Abstract

Metal–insulator–semiconductor (MIS) structures based on HgCdTe were fabricated after various stages of pn junction formation using As+ implantation and activation annealing. The energy of As+ ions was 200 keV with the fluence of 1014 cm−2. Heteroepitaxial HgCdTe films with near-surface graded-gap layers were grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on silicon substrates. It was shown that the electron concentration in the near-surface semiconductor layer increases after implantation to values of about 1017 cm−3, and after implantation and annealing in the near-surface semiconductor layer, a p+ layer appears with a hole concentration of more than 1.5 × 1018 cm−3. The generation rate of minority charge carriers in the space charge region after implantation is low, which indicates a low defectiveness of the thin near-surface MBE HgCdTe layer. After implantation and annealing, the generation rate increases significantly, which may be due to high defectiveness near the interface between Al2O3 and MBE HgCdTe. Dopant profiles were constructed in the near-surface HgCdTe layers after various technological procedures. It was shown that after implantation in films, the dopant concentration increases with distance from the interface to the depth of 0.1 μm.