MBE-Grown ZnTe/Si, a Low-Cost Composite Substrate

Growth of ZnTe on Si using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) has been pursued as a new approach for a lattice-matched, large-area, low-cost alternate substrate for both II-VI and III-V compound semiconductors with lattice constants very near 6.1 , such as HgCdSe and GaSb-based type II strained-layer superlattices. In this paper, we report our findings on the systematic study of MBE growth parameters for both ZnTe(211) on Si(211) and ZnTe(100) on Si(100). Near-optimal growth procedures have been established for producing ZnTe/Si wafers with high crystallinity, low defect and etch pit densities, as well as excellent surface morphology. Using this baseline MBE growth process, we obtained ZnTe(211)/Si wafers with x-ray full-width at half-maximum as low as 70 arcsec.