Applications of thermodynamical modeling in molecular beam epitaxy of CdxHg1-xTe

It is well known that the crystalline quality of Cd_xHg_1-xTe grown by molecular beam epitaxy is critically dependent on the substrate temperature. The optimal growth temperature has been identified immediately below the crossing of the Te-rich phase boundary, that is just below the temperature range where Te precipitation occurs in the layer. It is potentially very useful to be able to predict the optimal temperature and its variation with other growth parameters, but no general guidelines for this can be found in the literature. We have studied experimentally the variation of the optimal growth temperature with Hg flux, Cd mole fraction and growth rate. These results are compared with a thermodynamical model published previously by Gailliard. We find that the modeled position of the phase boundary coincides well with the observed variations in optimal growth temperature for growth on Te-terminated surfaces, within the uncertainties of available thermodynamical constants. We show that the optimal substrate temperature depends mainly on the Hg flux and Cd mole fraction, while the dependence on growth rate can be neglected in practical molecular beam epitaxy conditions. The experimental observation of optimal layer quality at the phase boundary could suggest the existence of an adsorbed layer of Te, acting as a reservoir for Te atoms and reducing the supersaturation of the growth reaction. Simultaneous growth on the (211)B and (100) orientations reveals a clear, although not very large, difference in optimal growth temperature and Cd incorporation, indicating a difference in growth kinetics. This can be accounted for in the thermodynamical model by condensation and evaporation coefficients.