Cadmium telluride films on foreign substrates

Abstract

Thin films of cadmium telluride have been deposited on mullite and tungsten-coated graphite substrates at 500–700 °C by the direct combination of cadmium and tellurium in a hydrogen atmosphere. Their microstructure and crystallographic properties were studied. The importance of controlling the Cd/Te molar ratio in the reaction mixture to obtain nearly stoichiometric films was demonstrated. The electrical properties of nonstoichiometric and nearly stoichiometric films on mullite substrates were measured by the van der Pauw technique. Schottky barriers were used to measure the electrical properties of cadmium telluride films on W/graphite substrates. The effective intragrain minority carrier diffusion length in n-type films was measured by the scanned electron beam method using a Schottky barrier structure.