Growth mechanism of ZnSe single crystal by chemical vapour transport method

Abstract

We attempted to grow ZnSe single crystals by the chemical vapour transport (CVT) method using the source material with different particle diameters. The purpose of this study is to examine the dependence the growth mechanism on the source particle diameter. We observed surface topographies of grown single crystals using the ultra-high vacuum atomic force microscopy (UHV-AFM) and investigated the growth mechanism. Dislocation densities were determined from etch pit density counts. It can be seen that the transport rate is decreasing with the increase in the source particle diameter. In the case of decreasing in the transport rate, transported atoms diffuse easily on the grown surface. Moreover, it turned out that the growth mechanism changed to the two-dimensional growth from the three-dimensional growth because the transport rate decreased. The average value of EPD of 3.0×10 3 cm −2 was obtained. We found that control of the source particle diameter is important for preparing high-quality ZnSe single crystals.