Raman investigation of optical phonons in the ion implanted Hg1−xCdxTe

• Hg1−x CdxTe (x = 0.3) implanted sample (B11-ions) with various doses up to 1 × 1015 cm−2 is studied for measuring the disorder using Micro Raman Scattering.
• Correlation of Raman active phonon modes is determined in the nano-crystals using the phonon confinement model.
• This study can be used to understand the surface region of HgCdTe for making infrared detector array with small pitch size.

Raman scattering is studied here for Hg1−xCdxTe (x = 0.3) samples implanted with 180-keV of B11 ions with various doses up to 1 × 1015 cm−2. Considering disorder in the implanted HgCdTe material, the correlation length of Raman active optical phonons is determined as a short range order in the nanocrystals. Phonon softening and asymmetric broadening are investigated for HgTe like LO and TO phonon modes in the Raman spectrum while CdTe like modes almost disappeared for the dose greater than 5 × 1013 cm−2. Disorder is measured quantitatively for wide ranges of doses on the basis of phonon confinement model. Nanostructures of the near-surface implantation-induced damage layer are known to consist of a mixture of amorphous HgCdTe and its nanocrystals. A significant reduction of the nanocrystallites size is reported here with increasing dose i.e. L = 34–46 A0 at dose of 1 × 1015 cm−2.