Molecular beam epitaxial growth and optical properties of the CdTe thin films on highly mismatched SrTiO3 substrates

作者:Tang, Kai; Zhu, Xuanting; Bai, Wei*; Zhu, Liangqing; Bai, Jiawei; Dong, Wenxia; Yang, Jing; Zhang, Yuanyuan; Tang, Xiaodong*; Chu, Junhao
来源:Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 2016, 685: 370-375.
DOI:10.1016/j.jallcom.2016.05.214

摘要

High-quality (111)-orientated CdTe thin films are grown epitaxially on SrTiO3 (001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The evolution of epitaxial growth was in-situ monitored by reflection high energy electron diffraction. The surface morphologies of the CdTe epitaxial layers (CTELs) are characterized by atomic force microscope, and atomic flat surface is confirmed as the thickness of the CTELs is below similar to 40 nm. Three types of X-ray diffraction, including single crystal omega-2 theta scan, double crystal X-ray rocking curve and phi-scan, are performed to characterize the structural quality of the CTELs. A full width at half maximum of similar to 110 arcsec is yielded when the thickness of the CTELs is beyond similar to 100 nm supported by the X-ray rocking curve. And f-scan illustrates the appearance of four types of domains in the CTELs. Finally, direct band transition is determined, and the temperature dependent transmittance spectra exhibit that the optical band gap decreases from 1.581 eV to 1.503 eV with the temperature from 10 K to 300 K because of the electron-phonon interaction and the lattice thermal expansion.