CdZnTe on Si(001) and Si(112): Direct MBE Growth for Large‐Area HgCdTe Infrared Focal‐Plane Array Applications

Abstract

To facilitate the production of IR detectors on Si substrates, epitaxial films of and have been deposited by molecular‐beam epitaxy (MBE) onto both Si(001) and Si(112) substrates. On Si(001) substrates misoriented from 0 to 8° toward [110], parallel epitaxy of and has been observed. Using initiation layers, high quality films have been demonstrated with (004) reflection x‐ray rocking curves as narrow as 158 arc‐secs for and 78 arc‐secs for . films grown by liquid‐phase epitaxy (LPE) on these MBE substrates have x‐ray rocking curves as low as 55 arc‐secs and average etch pit densities of . IR detectors, fabricated from LPE‐grown p‐on‐n heterojunctions on , are comparable in performance to detectors on bulk substrates with at 78 K for a 9.4 μm cutoff wavelength. On vicinal Si(112) substrates, nucleates in either the (112) or twin (552) orientation, depending on the Si misorientation. deposited on nucleates in the same orientation as the . X‐ray rocking curves as narrow as 110 arc‐secs have been obtained for epitaxy.