Low resistance ohmic contact on n -CdTe

Metallic europium has been epitaxially grown by molecular beam epitaxy on (001) n-CdTe, with formation of an interfacial layer resulting from a rare-earth–CdTe reaction. One basic result is that the interfacial layer can be formed not only with Eu but also with other rare earths, namely Sm or Nd. It has been demonstrated that the specific contact resistance of such heterostructures is dependent on the rare earth involved in the interfacial layer formation. In the case of a Nd-based layer, the lowest specific contact resistance of the Eu/interfacial-layer/n-CdTe heterostructure is found to be ρc≂2⋅10−3 Ω cm2.