Use of cation‐stabilized conditions to improve compatibility of CdTe and HgTe molecular beam epitaxy

Reflection high‐energy electron diffraction (RHEED) dynamic studies are used to reveal the strong differences in growth kinetics of CdTe and HgTe grown by molecular beam epitaxy. These differences arise from the stronger CdTe bond compared to the HgTe bond. Surface migration activation barriers for Cd and Hg migration on (100) Te‐stabilized surfaces were estimated from the RHEED dynamic studies to be 0.72 and 0.45 eV, respectively. These differences result in a large disparity in the ideal growth temperature for two‐dimensional layer‐by‐layer growth of the two material systems. However, by altering the growth conditions (i.e., going from anion stabilized to cation stabilized), the disparity in temperatures is shown to vanish. Consequences for this important heterostructure system are discussed.

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