Photoluminescence and double-crystal X-ray rocking-curve methods were used to investigate rapid thermal annealing effects in (111) CdTe epilayers which had been grown onto GaAs (100) by means of molecular beam epitaxy. The full-width at half-maximum of the double-crystal X-ray rocking-curves for as-grown CdTe layers was 400arcsec. When rapid thermal annealing was carried out at 550C, the full-width at half-maximum of the rocking-curves for the CdTe layer decreased to 265arcsec. It was shown that the luminescence intensity of a bound exciton (Do,X), for CdTe/GaAs that was annealed at 550C, was increased by as much as 53 times when compared with as-grown CdTe The relative intensity ratio of (Do,X), and the luminescence that was related to the defects in as-grown and annealed CdTe, decreased by a factor of 7.8. The results indicated that the crystallinity of CdTe epilayers that were grown onto (100) GaAs was improved by rapid thermal annealing.

M.D.Kim, T.W.Kang, M.S.Han, T.W.Kim: Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 1996, 35[1-8], 4220-4