Minority carrier lifetime in iodine-doped molecular beam epitaxy-grown HgCdTe

Journal Article · Mon Nov 02 04:00:00 EST 2015 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4935154· OSTI ID:22485994

Madni, I.; Umana-Membreno, G. A.; Lei, W.; Gu, R.; Antoszewski, J.; Faraone, L. ^[1]

---

1. School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia 6009 (Australia)

The minority carrier lifetime in molecular beam epitaxy grown layers of iodine-doped Hg{sub 1−x}Cd{sub x}Te (x ∼ 0.3) on CdZnTe substrates has been studied. The samples demonstrated extrinsic donor behavior for carrier concentrations in the range from 2 × 10{sup 16} cm{sup −3} to 6 × 10{sup 17} cm{sup −3} without any post-growth annealing. At a temperature of 77 K, the electron mobility was found to vary from 10{sup 4} cm{sup 2}/V s to 7 × 10{sup 3} cm{sup 2}/V s and minority carrier lifetime from 1.6 μs to 790 ns, respectively, as the carrier concentration was increased from 2 × 10{sup 16} cm{sup −3} to 6 × 10{sup 17} cm{sup −3}. The diffusion of iodine is much lower than that of indium and hence a better alternative in heterostructures such as nBn devices. The influence of carrier concentration and temperature on the minority carrier lifetime was studied in order to characterize the carrier recombination mechanisms. Measured lifetimes were also analyzed and compared with the theoretical models of the various recombination processes occurring in these materials, indicating that Auger-1 recombination was predominant at higher doping levels. An increase in deep-level generation-recombination centers was observed with increasing doping level, which suggests that the increase in deep-level trap density is associated with the incorporation of higher concentrations of iodine into the HgCdTe.

• OSTI ID: 22485994
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 18 Vol. 107; ISSN APPLAB; ISSN 0003-6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ABUNDANCE
ANNEALING
CARRIER LIFETIME
CARRIERS
DIFFUSION
DOPED MATERIALS
ELECTRON MOBILITY
INDIUM
IODINE
LAYERS
MOLECULAR BEAM EPITAXY
RECOMBINATION
SUBSTRATES
TRAPS