Growth and characterization of Cd1−xZnxTe thin films prepared from elemental multilayer deposition

Cd1−xZnxTe is a key material for fabrication of high-energy radiation detectors and optical devices. Conventionally it is fabricated using single crystal growth techniques. The method adopted here is the deposition of elemental multilayer followed by thermal annealing in vacuum. The multilayer structure was annealed at different temperatures using one to five repetitions of Cd–Zn–Te sequence. X-ray diffraction pattern for the multilayer with five repetitions revealed that annealing at 475 °C yielded single-phase material compared to other annealing conditions. EDX spectroscopy was carried out to study the corresponding compositions. Photoluminescence properties and change of resistance of the multilayer under illumination were also studied. The resistivity of the best sample was found to be a few hundreds of Ω cm.