Growth and characterisation of high quality MBE grown InNx Sb1-x

The growth, structural and optical characterisation of dilute nitride alloys of InSb grown by plasma‐assisted molecular beam epitaxy is presented. The layers were characterised by high‐resolution X‐ray diffraction indicating high crystalline quality and nitrogen incorporations up to 0.68%. Fourier‐transform infrared absorption measurements reveal the position of the absorption edge to be a result of the competing effects of bandgap reduction (due to nitrogen incorporation and bandgap renormalisation) and Moss–Burstein band filling. The bandgap of InNSb as a function of nitrogen incorporation (using a 5‐band k · p Hamiltonian and parameters from tight binding calculations) highlighting the applicability of the material in exploiting the atmospheric transmission window [S. D. Lord, NASA Technical Memorandum (1992) 103957] for long wavelength applications. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) This Letter presents the MBE growth, structural and optical characterisation of dilute nitride alloys of InNSb. The competing effects of bandgap reduction (from the incorporation of nitrogen) and the Moss–Burstein effect are considered and reveal that InNSb with less than 1 per cent nitrogen incorporation could potentially be used to span the entire 8 to 14 μm atmospheric transmission window.