Interface morphology studies of liquid phase epitaxy grown HgCdTe films by atomic force microscopy

In this paper we report an investigation of the morphology of the interfaces of liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) grown HgCdTe thin films on CdTe and CdZnTe substrates by atomic force microscopy (AFM) on freshly cleaved (110) crystallographic planes. An empirical observation which may be linked to lattice mismatch was indicated by an angle between the cleavage steps of the substrate to those of the film. Te precipitates with size ranging from 5 nm to 20 nm were found to be most apparent near the interface.