Characterisation of reactive-ion-etching-induced type-conversion in p-type HgCdTe using scanning laser microscopy

Abstract

In this work we characterise the n-type converted region occurring in both vacancy and extrinsically doped p-type Hg 1− x Cd x Te ( x ≈ 0.3) after standard reactive-ion-etch (RIE) process. The laser beam induced current (LBIC) technique is used to characterise parameters such as lateral and vertical conversion depth. Furthermore, by fitting a theoretically determined LBIC signature to the measured LBIC over the temperature range 80–300 K, it is possible to estimate the donor level density of the n-type converted region.