The effect of ion milling upon the electrical properties of vacancy- and As-doped p-Hg1−xCdxTe (x ~ 0.22) was studied. Samples for the study were fabricated by thermal annealing of n-type heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy onto GaAs. Their behaviour under ion milling was compared to that of HgCdTe bulk samples and films grown by liquid and vapour phase epitaxy. Residual donor concentration in molecular beam epitaxially-grown structures was found to be of the order of 1015/cm3; which was typical for HgCdTe. Unique to the molecular beam epitaxial structures was a high electron concentration (~1017/cm3) immediately after milling. It was supposed that this reflected the ion-milling-induced activation of an initially neutral defect, which was formed in the heterostructures during growth.

Ion-Milling-Assisted Study of Defect Structure of Acceptor-Doped HgCdTe Heterostructures Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy. M.Pociask, I.I.Izhnin, S.A.Dvoretsky, N.N.Mikhailov, Y.G.Sidorov, V.S.Varavin, K.D.Mynbaev, E.Sheregii: Semiconductor Science and Technology, 2008, 23[9], 095001 (5pp)