Growing high-quality ternary CdMnTe epilayers by molecular beam epitaxy on Si substrates and its mechanism

Abstract

Cd(Mn,Zn)Te-based ternary compound semiconductors with wide band-gaps are important in the detection of radiation and photovoltaic applications. This study characterizes Cd1-xMnxTe epilayers on Si substrates with various Mn compositions grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The surface smoothness, crystallinity and optical quality all are significantly improved with increasing Mn content. The Cd0.61Mn0.39Te epilayer with a thickness of only about 500 nm yields a full width at half maximum of the X-ray rocking curve of 165 arcsec. Photoluminescence spectra at 10 K show that the intensity of defect-related emissions is much lower than that of binary CdTe epilayers, reaching zero from the samples with high Mn content, while the integral intensity of the exciton-related emissions is increased by more than two orders of magnitude. Raman scattering spectra reveal that the intensity of the Te–Te related defect vibration modes falls significantly as the Mn content increase, even disappearing altogether in the samples with high Mn content. This work proposes that incorporating Mn atoms during epitaxial growth can promote the decomposition of Te2 sources, owing to the high sticking coefficient of Mn and the high cohesive energy of the Mn–Te bond, and then reduce the number of Te–Te related stacking fault defects, yielding high-quality CdMnTe epilayers. Our results herein demonstrate that the CdMnTe ternary epilayers are much more promising in terms of material quality than the CdZnTe ternary epilayers.