Growth of thick CdTe epilayers on GaAs substrates and evaluation of CdTe/n+-GaAs heterojunction diodes for an X-ray imaging detector

The growth characteristics of thick (100) CdTe epitaxial layers of a thickness up to 200 μm on a (100) GaAs substrate in a metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy (MOVPE) system and fabrication of CdTe/n⁺-GaAs heterojunction diodes for their possible applications in low-energy x-ray imaging detectors are reported. The grown epilayers were of high structural quality as revealed from the x-ray double-crystal rocking curve (DCRC) analysis, where the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) values of the (400) diffraction peaks was between 50 arcsec and 70 arcsec. The 4.2-K photoluminescence (PL) showed high-intensity bound-excitonic emission and very small defect-related peaks. The heterojunction diode fabricated had a good rectification property with a low value of reverse-bias current. The x-ray detection capability of the diode was examined by the time-of-flight (TOF) measurement, where good bias-dependent photoresponse was observed, but no carrier transport property could be deduced. It was found that the CdTe layer has a large number of trapping states as attributed to the cadmium-related vacancy and Ga-impurity, diffused from the substrate, related defect complexes.