Structural and Optical Characterisation of

A number of (001) HgTe-CdTe super-lattices grown by molecular beam epitaxy have been studied via structural and optical characterisation techniques. Transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction were used to determine the layer thicknesses and indicated the growths were of high quality. Room temperature transmission measurements were performed and from them absorption spectra produced which revealed the first two optical transitions, El-Hl and El-Ll. The absorption spectra showed good correlation to theoretical calculations based on a four band kmiddotp model. Strong room temperature infrared photoluminescence associated with the El-Hl transit ion was also observed in these superlattices