Metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxial growth of HgCdTe device heterostructures on three-inch-diameter substrates

A new metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxial (MOVPE) reactor-cell design has been developed to grow on 3-in.-diameter substrates. This was required to produce uniform, fully doped heterostructures needed for array producibility and wafer-scale processing compatibility. The reactor has demonstrated epitaxial growth of HgCdTe (MCT) with good morphology onto both GaAs and GaAs on Si wafers. The density of surface-growth defects, typical of MOVPE growth, has been reduced to <5 cm−2 at a sufficient yield to make the production of low cluster-defect, two-dimensional (2-D) arrays possible. The new horizontal reactor cell uses substrate rotation to achieve improved uniformity and is able to incorporate substrates up to 4-in. diameter. Good compositional and thickness uniformity was achieved on epilayers grown on 3-in.-diameter, low-cost GaAs and GaAs on Si wafers. Sufficient uniformity has been achieved to produce 12 sites of full-TV format 2-D arrays per slice. To yield the benefits of heterostructure design, the MCT epilayers also needed to demonstrate efficient and uniform activation of both arsenic (acceptor) and iodine (donor) dopants. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and Hall assessment showed that the uniformity of As and I doping was ±10%. Fully doped heterostructures have been grown to investigate the device performance in the 3–5 µm and 8–12 µm infrared bands. The 2-D array performance has shown that at 180 K near-background-limited performance (BLIP) diodes have been produced in the 3–5 µm band.

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