Epitaxial growth of rare earths and rare-earth compounds on II–VI semiconductors

It is shown that the deposition of Sm, Nd and Eu onto [001] CdTe results in the formation of an epitaxial rare-earth telluride layer. In the case of Sm and Nd, this layer acts as an efficient diffusion barrier allowing further epitaxial growth of metallic europium. Conversely, it is demonstrated that the CdTe epitaxial growth on Eu can be achieved. The experimental techniques used in this paper are molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS).