Epitaxial Growth of CdTe on (100) GaAs/Si and (111) GaAs/Si Substrates Using Molecular Beam Epitaxy and Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition

CdTe is a very important semiconductor with versatile applications extending from solar energy conversion to optoelectronics. In addition, both the close lattice match between CdTe and HgCdTe and the immunity of CdTe to autodoping of the HgCdTe make CdTe the substrate of choice for the growth of HgCdTe. However, CdTe is extremely difficult to grow and the nonavailability of good quality, large area, inexpensive, single crystal CdTe has slowed the development of HgCdTe detectors. Infrared device processing requires large areas of single crystal material and the problems associated with CdTe have called for alternative substrates for growing HgCdTe.