Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition of epitaxial mercury telluride.
01 January 1987
In this study, epitaxial layers of mercury telluride were grown at the lowest temperature ever reported for this material. High quality layers of mercury telluride were deposited onto cadmium telluride substrates at about 85C using a glow discharge to enhance the reaction between dimethylmercury and dimethyltelluride. The deposition rate was 4micron/hr, and the resulting layers were specular. Hall-effect measurements showed the material to be n-type with room temperature and 77 K carrier concentrations of 5.0 x 10 sup 17 cm sup -3 and 1.0 x 10 sup 17 cm sup -3 respectively. In addition, the layers were found to have excellent carrier transport properties: room temperature Hall mobility was 22,000 cm sup 2/Vs and 77 K mobility was 52,000 cm sup 2/Vs. The electronic properties of these layers are about equal to those reported for mercury telluride grown using higher temperature processes such as MBE and high temperature MOCVD.