Reduction of surface recombination in n-type HgZnTe (x=0.16) crystal

A model of surface recombination velocity for n-type Hg 1− x Zn x Te is presented. It has been shown that, both experimentally and theoretically, the surface recombination velocity is dominated by Shockley–Read recombination mechanism at higher temperature and dominated by Auger process at low temperature. We have further developed a surface recombination theory for the narrow-gap semiconductor. It is concluded that the optimum conditions to reduce recombination velocity is about 2×10 11 cm −2 in the fixed charge density and the Cd 0.8 Zn 0.2 Te passivation layer thickness is between 140 and 160 nm.