Growth of epitaxial CdTe thin films on amorphous substrates using single crystal graphene buffer

Journal Article · Mon Dec 24 00:00:00 EST 2018 · Carbon

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2018.12.094· OSTI ID:1503513

Mohanty, Dibyajyoti ^[1]; Lu, Zonghuan ^[2]; Sun, Xin ^[2]; Xiang, Yu ^[3]; Gao, Lei ^[4]; Shi, Jian ^[5]; Zhang, Lihua ^[6]; Kisslinger, Kim ^[6]; Washington, Morris A. ^[3]; Wang, Gwo-Ching ^[3]; Lu, Toh-Ming ^[3]; Bhat, Ishwara B. ^[1]

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1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (United States). Dept. of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering. Center for Materials, Devices and Integrated Systems
2. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (United States). Center for Materials, Devices and Integrated Systems
3. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (United States). Center for Materials, Devices and Integrated Systems. Dept. of Physics, Applied Physics and Astronomy
4. Univ. of Science and Technology Beijing (China). Corrosion and Protection Center. Key Lab. for Environmental Fracture
5. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (United States). Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
6. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Center for Functional Nanomaterials

Traditionally, a high-quality CdTe film can only be grown on a single crystal substrate with a small lattice mismatch. We report the epitaxy of CdTe films on monolayer single crystal graphene buffered amorphous SiO₂/Si(100) substrates, despite a 86% lattice mismatch between CdTe(111) and graphene. X-ray pole figure, electron backscatter diffraction mapping and transmission electron microscopy all confirm that the epitaxial CdTe films are composed of two domains: the primary and the Σ3 twin. The crystal quality of films is shown to improve as the post-deposition annealing temperature increases. However, the rotational misalignment in CdTe remains large even after annealing. Through density functional theory calculations on the charge transfer distribution at the interface of CdTe and graphene, it is found that the interface is dominated by the weak van der Waals interaction, which explains the large spread of in-plane orientation in CdTe films. Furthermore, the rotational misalignment in graphene itself is also confirmed to produce the large in-plane orientation spread in CdTe films. Although imperfect in epitaxy quality, this work demonstrates that monolayer single crystal graphene can buffer amorphous substrates for growing epitaxial films, and hence hints an opportunity for developing advanced thin film devices using graphene as a template.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, NY (United States); Univ. of Science and Technology Beijing (China)
• Sponsoring Organization: Empire State Development (ESD) (United States); National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); National Science Foundation (NSF) (United States); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0012704
• OSTI ID: 1503513
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1756110
• Report Number(s): BNL--211468-2019-JAAM
• Journal Information: Carbon, Journal Name: Carbon Vol. 144; ISSN 0008-6223
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE