Direct growth of high-quality thick CdTe epilayers on Si (211) substrates by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy for nuclear radiation detection and imaging

Direct growth of high-quality, thick CdTe (211) epilayers, with thickness up to 100 μm, on Si (211) substrates in a vertical metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy system is reported. In order to obtain homo-orientation growth on Si substrates, pretreatment of the substrates was carried out in a separate chamber by annealing them together with pieces of GaAs at 800–900°C in a hydrogen environment. Grown epilayers had very good substrate adhesion. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) value of the x-ray double-crystal rocking curve from the CdTe (422) reflection decreased rapidly with increasing layer thickness and remained between 140–200 arcsec for layers >18 μm. Photoluminescence measurement at 4.2 K showed high-intensity, bound excitonic emission and very small defect-related deep emissions, indicating the high crystalline quality of the grown layers. Furthermore, a CdTe/n⁺-Si heterojunction diode was fabricated that exhibited clear rectifying behavior.