Spectroscopic, microscopic, and internal stress analysis in cadmium telluride grown by close-space sublimation

•Assessing the characteristics of CdTe deposited on patterned Si substrates•Proving the utility of confocal Raman microscopy in monitoring the induced stress•Confirming the partial stress release through the grain boundary relaxation effect•Demonstrating the phonon confinement effect in low-dimensional CdTe•Providing information that targets the needed adjustments in the growth processes

High quality materials with excellent ordered structure are needed for developing photovoltaic and infrared devices. With this end in mind, the results of our research prove the importance of a detailed, comprehensive spectroscopic and microscopic analysis in assessing cadmium telluride (CdTe) characteristics. The goal of this work is to examine not only material crystallinity and morphology, but also induced stress in the deposit material. A uniform, selective growth of polycrystalline CdTe by close-space sublimation on patterned Si(111) and Si(211) substrates is demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy images. Besides good crystallinity of the samples, as revealed by both Raman scattering and Fourier transform infrared absorption investigations, the far-infrared transmission data also show the presence of surface optical phonon modes, which is direct evidence of confinement in such a material. The qualitative identification of the induced stress was achieved by performing confocal Raman mapping microscopy on sample surfaces and by monitoring the existence of the rock-salt and zinc-blende structural phases of CdTe, which were associated with strained and unstrained morphologies, respectively. Although the induced stress in the material is still largely due to the high lattice mismatch between CdTe and the Si substrate, the current results provide a direct visualization of its partial release through the relaxation effect at crystallite boundaries and of preferential growth directions of less strain. Our study, thus offers significant value for improvement of material properties, by targeting the needed adjustments in the growth processes.