Subband structure in the electric quantum limit for Hg1-xCdxTe.

Abstract

The electron subband structure in the electric quantum limit of the n-type inversion layer in narrow-band-gap semiconductors has been investigated by means of capacitance-spectroscopy, magnetoconductivity-oscillation, and cyclotron-resonance measurements on p-type ${\mathrm{Hg}}_{1\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathit{x}}$${\mathrm{Cd}}_{\mathit{x}}$Te metal-insulator-semiconductor-structure samples. A method is presented to determine the subband structures, which depend on the inversion-layer electron concentration, directly from experimental data. The ground-state subband energy ${\mathit{E}}_{0}$, Fermi level ${\mathit{E}}_{\mathit{F}}$, effective mass ${\mathit{m}}^{\mathrm{*}}$, average depth of the inversion layer ${\mathit{Z}}_{0}$, and the depletion-layer depth ${\mathit{Z}}_{\mathit{d}}$ for ${\mathrm{Hg}}_{1\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathit{x}}$${\mathrm{Cd}}_{\mathit{x}}$Te, with x=0.234 and 0.21, are determined quantitatively from the experimental measurements by using this method.