The crystal growth of ZnSe by the traveling heater method with the accelerated crucible rotation technique

Abstract

The accelerated crucible rotation technique (ACRT) was employed in the traveling heater method (THM) growth of ZnSe crystals to manage the convection in the melt. Considering the large solubility, the PbCl2 was chosen as a solvent. During the growth, the growth interface changed from concave to slightly convex depending on the ACRT parameters. The ZnSe single crystals were obtained, when the ACRT with the maximum rotation of 15 rpm at the suitable growth rate (2.4 mm/day) was used. Furthermore, the chemical mappings of the energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) show that there are two kinds of the solvent inclusions existed in the grown ZnSe crystals, i.e. PbCl2 and ZnCl2. And the PbCl2 inclusions are homogeneous with a total concentration of 7.03 × 102 cm−2. In addition, the FWHM on X-ray rocking curve of the (220) diffraction planes is 22 arcsec. The chemical etch pit density on the (110) cleavage plane is (1–2) × 105 cm−2 and the average infrared transmittance is over 68% in the range from 650 cm−1 to 4000 cm−1. All of these indicate that the grown ZnSe single crystals have good crystalline quality.